Joe stirred the fire and picked the kettle away from the fire with folded gloves to protect his fingers. “You have that look in your eyes again, Hoss”, he teased, and smiled playfully from under his brow. Hoss didn’t even notice at first, so Joe had to repeat his line and throw a dead twig at him.

Hoss jolted, but very slightly. “What, Joe? Why’re you throwing things at me?”

“You’ve only been three days away from them and already you’re lost in your own world.”

Hoss smiled, just to himself, so inwardly that his blue eyes seemed to glitter with snowflakes and distant candle-light when he thought of his family. “Yeah, I reckon I am”, he said with a soft chuckle. “It’s just that… I’ve been apart.”

Joe looked at his brother with a curious look and shifted under his heavy coat, to make himself warmer. He wrapped his fingers around the coffee cup and blew to the surface of the steaming black drink to make it easier to taste. “You were married last summer, and still you act sometimes if you had met her just yesterday.”

Hoss’ smile curved a little bit more towards his own heart. “Yeah, ain’t it so. It feels quite wonderful inside of me, too.” He couldn’t have imagined any emotion more fulfilling than what his brother had just described.

Joe sipped his coffee and heard Adam shift in his place, too, so that he could hear better what Hoss had to say. Both of them stared curiously at their middle brother, until he noticed their expectant looks and chuckled. “What. Ain’t you got any other things to look at but me?”

“Tell us”, Adam said, pouring a cup of coffee for himself. “How does it feel, after all these months?”

Hoss looked into the fire, which reflected from the surface of his misty blue gaze. “I don’t really know, Adam.” He frowned slightly, and chased his dreams in a moment of silence. “I mean, I can’t really put my finger on it, exactly. Some days, especially when she’s cross with me, I wonder if it was really worth it after all. Sometimes I think I know her all completely, and I look at the back of her and think, how it could last any longer?”

Adam and Joe sat in silence, looking at their brother and awaiting for what would follow.

The corner of Hoss’ mouth twitched, when a smile broke through over his face and lit up the shimmering blue eyes that looked into all the memories. “And then she just turns around, and I fall in love again.”

He pulled himself out from his own thoughts and fixed his look back into his brothers, grinning to them in a way to disqualify his home-spun poetry. “Don’t be scared, brothers, it’s still the same ol’ Hoss.”

Adam winked to him from behind his shadowed dimple. “Although, you’ve come a long way, little brother.” He took a sip of his coffee and looked into the shadows of the trees, with an affectionate smile on his lips, and a look of distant memories in his hazy eyes.

Joe hugged his knees and stared at the flames with a small curl on his lips, implying to Hoss that he was thinking of the latest crush of his. Although, Hoss had to hide his smirk under the rim of his big hat as he lowered his eyes, since he knew Joe’s crushes came and went away quickly as snowflakes in late winter. Better not judge this one before it had been proven to have any direction, though. He’d find his own happiness from somewhere, some day.

Hoss, on the other hand, was going home to Elin.

* * *

At the sound of the hooves on the frozen ground, a boy jumped up and ran to the horses to greet them. His woolly hat was somewhere at the edge of his crown almost ready to fall off, but even though the boy sprang to and fro quickly like a little ermine, it stuck to his brown curls that could have used a pair of scissors to tame their prancing. “Hoss! Uncle Adam, Uncle Joe!” He took hold of Chubb’s reins and was jumping on his feet when he waited for Hoss to dismount.

Hoss came down on the ground and took the boy in a firm grip from his shoulders, and messed his hair with his big fist so roughly that the hat finally fell. “What’s up, Thor Emil?” he asked with rumbling laughter. Tor tried to wriggle out of his bear’s hands, but it wasn’t much resistance to the big man.

“I’m fine, Hoss”, the boy said, and took a hold of Chubb’s reins again when he was finally released. “I was waiting for you already yesterday.” He grinned at Hoss. “Actually, I was waiting for you already the day before yesterday.”

Hoss grinned back, and picked the hat and dusted it well before he put it quite heavily on the boy’s head. “Will you see to the horses with Adam and Joe, Thor?” he asked, and patted his shoulder with a loud slap.

Hoss was happy to see the boy again, and the way he had found some brotherly ways with Joe and Adam after living just with his mother and sisters for so long was often making Hoss’ heart feel too small. But this time, though, he had all other ideas in his head about whom he wanted to see, and of course he couldn’t expect a little boy to understand that. Thus, instead of running to the house and carrying his wife to a place where nobody else could see them, he patted the neck of Chubb and gave a wink to the boy over a conspiratorial smile. “It will give you some stories of those Uncles of yours, after all that tattle with them womenfolks and my Pa.”

Tor punched his stomach with very little effect and ducked his head to walk under Chubb’s neck to the other side. “I’ll take Chubb, Hoss.”

“A year or two and that little one is gonna beat you in a fistfight, if you let this go on”, Adam said to Hoss and cocked his eyebrow.

Joe giggled out loud and stroked the neck of weary Cochise. “It didn’t make you do that, older brother, no matter how hard you tried.”

“Shut up, will you? Or ride back where you came from.”

“No way, Adam, it’ll have the smell of you stuck on it.”

Their bantering voices disappeared into the barn and let Hoss walk to the front door alone. He took his hat off, looked at its dusty rim for a moment and gathered his thoughts, and opened the door quietly.

He wasn’t greeted with the normal humming and the hurl of his wife strolling in the house, fixing things here and there, laughing at the kids and smiling at his Pa when he came to observe her intricate needlework.

No.

This time he was welcomed by a dynamic exchange of tempered exclamations of a woman and a little girl, with an occasional ‘but’ from Ben tossed in to stir the mix. Hoss walked in without a sound, and hanged his hat from the rim glumly. The little six or seven-year-old girl was hanging from the staircase reel and wailing clamorously. Elin was walking to and fro and talking in Swedish and English in turns. Ben stood still with his shoulders crunched, his fists resting on his hips and the right hand twitching in a way that anticipated a thrust of his forefinger up to the air any second.

Hoss hung his hat on the wall. Maybe it was safer watching from the side.
He hadn’t been quiet enough, because Elin spotted him right away. “Rebecka, see? Now Hoss has come home and he finds us here. Mind repeating what you said to Faffa Ben, to Pappa Hoss?”

Rebecka sniffed from the staircase and buried her face in her hands, and shook her head so hard that her blonde braids swung. Her shoulders were shaking as she had started to cry.

Elin put her hands on her hips and glowered at the girl. “If you can’t repeat it to Hoss, why did you take bother to say it to Faffa Ben in the first place?” Anger in her gray eyes was tough and made even Hoss shiver a little under his thick coat, and he pulled his mouth into a little contemptuous gesture while his own eyebrows gathered into a frown. He took his coat off and hung it on the rack.

This might take some time.

The girl and the woman exchanged some words in the bouncing rhythm of Swedish, making the fight sound like a casting of spells over each other, Elin stomping her feet and walking here and there with a completely foreign pace in them, until they both remembered to change back to English. “Listen to me, little girl. We live here in Ponderosa out of the good will of Benjamin Cartwright, and if you call him an old and ugly and yet something different, I take it you’d rather live somewhere else.”

Ben raised his eyebrows and eyed the floor, his fingers still twitching in the manner that anticipated a chastisement of some sort, but he held his temper. Elin walked to the girl and yanked her up from her hand, and started to escort her to the door. Rebecka started to fight back when she saw what her mother was doing, but Elin wasn’t faltered by her kicks or her howling or her punches at her. “You can go and live… in the Creek, or in the forest, but if you live in Ponderosa, I expect you to behave well towards Faffa Ben.”

“Mamma, don’t make me go”, the girl cried and her face was creased with so much pain that it made Hoss’ heart ache. Elin motioned Hoss away from the door and opened it, and Rebecka fell on her knees on the floor and tried to pull her hand away from the tight hold of her mother’s. “Plee-eeaase!”

Elin looked at Rebecka very sternly, and released her hand. “What do you go and say to Faffa Ben, Rebecka?”

Rebecka rose up quickly and sprang to Ben, and fell on the ground and hugged his leg. “Don’t make me go away like Mamma says, Faffa Ben.” She started sobbing again. Ben traveled awkwardly to the blue chair by the fireplace to sit down, and dragged the girl with him as she didn’t release her hold. He pulled the girl on his lap and tried to catch her eyes with his dark brown gaze.

“Look at me, Rebecka, will you?” He lifted her chin up with his forefinger.
“You are not going to make me move away, Faffa Ben, are you?” Rebecka pulled her mouth to a little rosebud as an expression of grief and looked Ben in the eyes, a shade afraid of his answer.

“We-ell, Rebecka, I think we could come to terms with that.” He held his face completely serene while saying that, and his voice was calm and assuring.

Rebecka sniffed, and bit her fist. “To terms with… what, Faffa Ben?”

Ben took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the face of the girl, and let her blow her nose. Elin crossed her hands over her chest and tilted her head expectantly. “You might start from an apology, little girl.”

Rebecka lowered her eyes to Ben’s shirt buttons, and hesitated for a moment. “Faffa Ben…”

“Yes, Rebecka?” Ben raised his eyebrows and tried to peek under the girl’s brow.

“I’m… I’m sorry I said you were ugly.” Her head rose up and she looked at Ben, and raised her hand to touch the gray hair of her step-grandpa. “In fact, you’re not ugly at all. I don’t know what made me say it.”

Ben coughed, and lowered his eyes, and returned them back to Rebecka’s when his composure was restored. “I can’t help much for being old, either, can I, Rebecka?” The girl pursed her lips and looked a bit helpless in the arms of Ben, and he continued with his soft voice. “I was born many years before you, Rebecka, and the time works the same for all of us. It’s not any fault to be old.”

“Will I be as old as you some day?” Rebecka asked, almost forgetting her sobs and looking curiously at her new mentor.

Ben raised his eyebrows and directed his gaze back to the floor in a manner that was so familiar to Hoss, and held his laughter hidden behind his creased skin. “I sure do hope so, little Rebecka”, he said with a faint smile, and pressed a kiss on her forehead. “Now, go and tell your mother you don’t have to move back to Linden’s Creek, and go wash up for the supper”, he said with a conspirational wink that disappeared almost before it was seen.

He put her on the floor and Hoss extended his arms for the girl, inviting her to be lifted up in the air. “Come’e here, dear Rebbeca”, he said, and collected the girl on his arms. “Tell me, sweet pie, what’s this for a homecoming?” He squeezed the nose of Rebecka and made her grunt. “You let me hear one more time you calling my Pa here names, and I’ll dang right smack your li’l bottom for that”, he said, even though he knew he’d never do any such a thing to the girl.

A portion of horror came to the pale blue eyes of Rebecka. “But Hoss… that will hurt.” Her eyes were wide pools of ice blue dew, and she bit her lip nervously. “Will it?”

Hoss kept his gaze very level and pursed his lips, while squeezing the little girl sitting on his arm. “It will, Rebbeca, but it works both ways. It hurts me to see you hurt my Pa, and I have to make it stop.”

Rebecka looked at her Faffa Ben, bowing her head to show how ashamed she was. “I… I’m sorry, for real. I didn’t… Did I make you cry?”

Ben covered his mouth with his fist and crossed his legs. “No, Rebecka. You didn’t make me cry. A trifle sad, a bit angry, though.” He nodded calmly. “But I’m all right. I’ll live.”

“Good.” Rebecka turned her eyes to Hoss. “I’m sorry, Hoss.”

Hoss raised his eyebrows, awaiting. “There’s some one still waiting, Rebbeca.”

He slid the girl down from his arms and turned her to face her mother. Her shoulders curled to shrink under his palms, but her voice didn’t disappear into a whisper in spite of her defeated posture.

“I’m sorry, Mamma.”

Elin bent down and patted her head. “All forgotten, Rebecka. Upstairs, clean up like Faffa Ben said.” When the girl walked slowly upstairs, with her feet weighing more than all the troubles of the whole world, Elin gave a glimmering quick smile to Hoss and lit up all the feelings he had been cherishing deep in his heart, so far back from the sunlight that he had almost forgotten them all, too. All the anger had melted away from her face and the shimmer of the freckles that were faded to almost invisible after the winter had lit up again.

Ben coughed, rose up from his chair and strolled to the doorway to take his coat from the rack. With a strong pat on the arm of his son, he disappeared from the door. “I’ll go help the boys in the barn”, he mumbled. The door closed behind him, and Hoss took a firm hold of the figure of his wife and pulled her closer. His hands were searching for any changes, traveling over her waist and her sides and the curve of her back, but she was exactly as she had been when he left her just some days ago.

Hoss followed her lips with his eyes very carefully, when she opened her mouth and revealed her teeth with a pulsating laughter. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“And I thought that he’d dad burn never leave”, said Hoss.

* * *

Calm Sunday afternoon was wrapped into dark misty clouds. Thick rain ran in curved paths and treated the ground and anything on it with soft droplets of moist and harsh sleet in turns. Mostly the sound of the weather kept its lull delicate and gentle, though, and had the Cartwrights engaged in hobbies and games inside the living room without worries or fears.

Sigrid was playing the guitar, and every now and then she asked Adam to sing for her. Uncle Adam was yielding easily and leaned back on his chair, closing his eyes and singing the melodies to her in a tender tone, not to disturb the games of chess or the reading of books or the clattering knitting that happened around them both.

Adam had been teaching both Elin and Sigrid to play, but whereas Elin had had the patience to learn some seven chords and she was satisfied with an end result that was almost there, Sigrid found pleasure in exploring the instrument and trying out new things. At the age of nine, she looked a bit undersized behind Adam’s guitar, but her fingers were long enough to reach most of the chords and positions, and her flexible hand traveled over the neck and the strings like a spider exercising over the tunes. Her little voice was yet a bit underdeveloped to reach all the songs she liked to play, so usually she asked Adam to come and do the singing part.

Tor was leaning his chin on his fists, and trying to stare at the chess board to be able to find a way to make any move without losing to Ben. He didn’t have any moves left, but he imitated the older people and tried to change the defeat with sheer willpower and a firm glare. Hoss was observing the game from the side, and Joe was reading a book to Rebecka further on, as she had become tired of learning to knit like her mother and tossed the needles and the yarns in a lump on the floor. Elin’s mouth was still twitching from the memory of that, but she continued with her chore and hummed along the songs with Adam.

Tor gave an exasperated sigh and threw his hands to the air. “I’m done.” He knocked his king down on the board and leaned back in his chair. “I’ll never beat you, Faffa Ben.”

“I’m glad you’re man enough to admit it, son”, Ben said and winked. “My boys don’t always have your integrity.”

Tor grinned. “Your boys have hard heads, Faffa.” He had to curl in the corner of the armchair to escape from Hoss’s fists that reached to tickle and pinch him, and he laughed heartily.

“You just watch, Thor, or I’ll keep you away from your Uncles Adam and Joe if their company has a bad influence on your tongue, young man.”

“Tell me about the hard head”, Joe said from his chair and closed the book. “If somebody had as hard a head as you, brother, we’d establish a good industry in cracking nuts.” He took the hands of Rebecka in his own, and gestured them in a way of banging two heads together. “Like this!” He added a crushing sound to the scene when her fists met. Rebecka giggled.

Tor stepped up and walked to the window. “If the weather is like this tomorrow, do we have to go to school?”

It wasn’t exactly that he disliked school, or resented the learning, but it was very hard for him to concentrate all day. Sometimes he could listen to the lessons very intensely and recite them at home, but sometimes his math books would be filled with ornate drawings of birds and horses and feeble humans in the margins, and a note from the teacher would be burning in his pocket. Sigrid was more adapted to learning in the class-room, as she was not so much behind the pupils of her own age, but Rebecka was, if possible, even more hopeless than Tor. She didn’t understand why the rules were so strict, or why a six was always a six and not a different six in different parts of the world, and her questions usually made even Adam very silent.

Elin was working with her son a lot to help him cover the missed years of education, and he had found a surprise ally in Little Joe, who remembered all too well how it was difficult to be tied in the classroom and be bothered by things that didn’t seem so important at that particular time. Hoss examined with endearing interest his younger brother’s errands over Tor’s schoolwork. Neither Hoss nor Joe had been a match for Adam’s tendency for learning, but now Joe had the willpower to at least try.

Although, the learning was not all easy for any of them. Hoss remembered one time when Sigrid’s newly found interest in books had been questioned, too. She had borrowed a book from Adam, and though he had thought it might be a bit too difficult for the girl to comprehend, she had taken it with affection and read it with care. Until she had been discovered by Adam, with the book and a pen in her hands and the margins of the book decorated with her minuscule hand-writing all along the first part that she had covered.

‘My book’, was all that Adam could say at that time. He had held it in his hand and just stared at it, and at Sigrid, and at the book, and ground his teeth together so that his jaw had clenched. Sigrid had just stared at him back, surprised and scared by his reaction, and nearly started to cry. ‘I just… I just wanted to write down what I felt when I read it, not to forget’, she had said, and turned around to hug Hoss’ big body when he had stood behind her. He had taken her head in his hands and protected her hurt feelings from his brother for a moment.

Adam had opened the book and turned its pages slowly, trying to read the mix of English and home-made Swedish, and finally he had swallowed very hard and smiled a little. ‘Turn around, Secret, don’t be afraid.’ Adam had knelt down in front of her and pressed the book in her hands. ‘It’s your book, now’, he had said with a wink, even though a part of his voice had been a shade of sad.

Sigrid had pressed the book against her chest and looked up at Hoss. ‘You’ve got good brothers, Hoss.’

Hoss had, he agreed.

He looked at the figure of the boy who had started to grow out of his sleeves and cuffs and smiled at his back. “The weather might be all clear tomorrow, Thor.”

The boy sighed, and hung his head. “Yeah.” Something in the way he said that made Hoss think, that it would be even worse that way.

Elin took a spool of yarn from a basket at her feet, and set her needles on the coffee table. “Come here, Tor Emil. Hold the yarn while I make it into a ball.” Obediently Tor sat next to her on the settee, pushed his hands inside the wool and observed her mother while she pulled the yarn to twine it around her fingers. Elin smiled.

“You’ll do fine tomorrow, Tor.”

* * *

Hoss was resting his head on the belly of Elin, and pressing his ear and his cheek against the soft cotton of her shirt and her skirts. Every movement of his made her laugh, as she was easy to tickle, and what Hoss was trying to hear made her erupt in even more laughter. Her braid had fallen away from the crown into which she had tied it around her head in the morning, and the corners of her eyes were twitching up and creasing into a bunch of wrinkles at every giggle.

“Yoo hoo…” Hoss started, and pressed his mouth against her belly. Elin tried to kick him away, but he held her firmly and didn’t stagger. She didn’t like the flutter of the loose skin that had been left there, over her stomach, after her three pregnancies, but Hoss found it very soft and entertaining. “Are you there, little one?”

Elin laughed and slapped his arm playfully. “Stop it, you stupid thing.” Hoss ignored her and pressed over her body to hear an answer. She tried to wriggle out of his hold and laughed at his tickling hands. “It’s too early to know, Erik, if it will stay, or if it is even there.”

Hoss frowned at the rolled r’s in his name, and pressed a finger over his puckered lips. “Shhh. I think I’m hearing something.” Elin laughed and made his head vibrate again, and he turned his head to speak to the belly again. “Are you a little girl or a baby boy?”

Elin stroked his hair and the look in her eyes moved a bit distant, the gray shade melting to the memories. “Does it matter, Erik?”

Hoss turned his eyes to her and smiled a very silly smile. “No, Elin, it has no importance whatsoever. But I think it’s gonna be a gal, a fine gal of twelve pounds at birth who will grow up to match her Ma and her Pa in a year or two.”

“Twelve pounds; don’t be crazy!” she exclaimed, and rolled his head with her deep laughter. “No. I think it will be a boy, a clever and a cunning beast of the mountains like the men of your family.”

“Don’t know about that, Elin, it’s been quite a rough time for our Pa and the gals seem awful nice to me.”

“You didn’t see them as babies, it was pure terror.”
Hoss laughed, and made her body tremble in turn, and her low chuckle turned almost to a soft purring under his head.

“Hoss…”

“Yes, Elin?”

“Take your head off, I think the children are coming.”

Hoss rose up very slowly and unwillingly. Elin followed him and tucked his vest to make it straight, and he combed her hair behind her ears very quickly before the thudding sounds of the running children reached their doorway.

* * *

“I would like us to go see the Creek whenever the weathers will allow”, Elin said, looking through the window of the living room and eyeing the horizon. “I’d like to see it, and live there again, before our house is all finished. Or done enough.” She smiled at the grandiose plans of the rest of the Cartwrights, who had her house rising up to the skies in several floors and dozens of rooms, when she herself would have been equally happy with just one.

Hoss put his arms around her figure that was staying stubbornly slim, and pressed his chin over her shoulder. “What about the kids and their school?”

“Maybe… we could negotiate a holiday for them. Ask for homework.” She leaned against him and kept her eyes at the horizon. “Maybe your Pa could look after them for the weeks and they could come home for weekends.” She remained silent for a while. “I… I miss it.”

“I know, sweetheart.” Her feet had been burning to go from the first vague signs of advancing spring, and even though Hoss was convinced she was happy with him at the ranch, he could feel her being pulled back to her home at Linden’s Creek that they had wrapped up for the winter sleep last fall. While all of her was firmly on the Ponderosa, a part of her was still buried deep in the borderland soil with the conifer forests and their secrets, and she wanted to see them again.

“Tell you what. We’ll ride to the school one day and talk with the teacher, and see what we could do.”

She smiled at him and the gray lights of her eyes lit up in joy. “You would do that for me, Hoss?”

He turned her around to look at her eyes, plain for his gaze under the pale, thin eyebrows. “I would, Ailynn, I would. You came here for me, too, didn’t you?”

Her nose creased in a grin and she took a hold of his chin very gently with her fingers. “You’re one good man, Hoss Cartwright.”

“I am, ain’t I?” Her reactions had made him feel like a teenager again, and he knew his eyes were glimmering in the same way as hers over the common childishness. She had been baking, and the familiar scent of cinnamon had started to nest in her hair again. Hoss wanted the spring to come soon to paint the freckles over her nose once more. “Sometimes worth even two.”

Elin laughed, and put her hands over his arms. “A dozen of others wouldn’t make up for you, you silly thing.”

* * *

The whole Ponderosa was buzzing over an event like a beehive. Joe Cartwright had brought a girl over for dinner, and as much as all of them were curious to ask him directly, not one of them had the guts to do it, and so the buzz travelled through the house behind Little Joe’s back.

Except, of course, for Elin, who was brave enough to go and talk to him. She leaned on the corral fence, where Joe stood on the other side of her watching the bronco-busting and joining in every now and then. “Josef“, she started with her accent, “how do you feel about this Carrie Bonnell?”

Joe was looking at the horses, and when her question finally sunk to him, he nearly startled. “Carrie Bonnell?”

“Yes, the girl you invited here yesterday.” Hoss was standing a bit further away, but tried to lean as much towards the conversation as he dared, without being forced to move so that his eavesdropping would be noticed. Joe chuckled, a bit embarrassed, a bit surprised, and lowered his gaze.

“I think… I think I wanna marry her.”

Elin put her head against her arms on the rail, and peered sideways at Joe.

“You’ve known her for a week, Joe.”

She caught him with his defenses up. “A week and a day.”

“Exactly.” Elin cocked an invisible eyebrow and pierced Joe’s hazel eyes with her steel gray ones with ease. “What do you plan to marry when you marry her?”

Joe smiled a wide and white smile. “The most beautiful girl who ever came to my life, of course!” He bowed his head, flushing a bit in front of Elin’s unstaggering stare, and pushed his hat to the back of his crown boyishly.

“And her expectations? What do you think she’d want to marry?”

Joe’s smile faltered a little, and his gaze was concentrated to nothing in front of him anymore. “I… I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

Elin was ruthless. “What are her plans? What does she dream of?” Joe continued his silence and folded his gloves on the top reel on the fence, without being able to answer.

“I could try to give her what she wants.”

“Perhaps you should find it out first, Little Joe.” Elin shook her head slightly and put her own hand on top of Joe’s hands, stopping the nervous movement of his fingers. “Give her time, Joe. You’re still in love with a dream; when you start coming back from the dream and see who she really is, she might well be just the thing you see right now. But if she turns out different, don’t have both of you tied together in something that you’d hate to spend the rest of your life with.”

Joe blushed and went all awkward. “How can you be ever sure of that, Elin?”

She winked at him, and patted his fingers very motherly. “You’ll just have to take a chance, at some point, when you think the dream and the life have met.” She looked at her own fingers a bit shyly and blushed herself. “Or you can wait for the one who’ll make that dream never go away.” She pulled the hat of Joe back to his head properly, and fixed it to tilt over his left ear a bit more. “You’re a good boy, Josef, and you shouldn’t settle for anything less than the best.”

Joe blushed and turned away. “Don’t touch my hat, sis’. It’s sacred.” He climbed on the fence and dropped his feet to the other side of the rails. Hoss could see him smiling to himself, though, and Elin was laughing softly at his back, when he went up to the young horses and told the men he’d be coming up, too.

When Joe was far enough away, she turned her eyes at Hoss and pierced him with their iron look, which told him that she knew he had heard every word.

A loud ‘yahoo!’ was boiling up in Hoss, but he held his breath and tried to not shout it out loud. After all, the spring wasn’t so far along, just yet.

* * *

Elin flew off from the buckboard and ran the few steps that separated her from the Creek. She spread her hands and closed her eyes to inhale very deeply, and her knitted lace shawl spread out like a pair of wings of a giant butterfly to catch the wind. The green hems of her dress were mixing in the early grass perking out of the ground.

Hoss smiled at her arched figure and pulled the reins of the horses to stop them from running away, when Tor, Sigrid and Rebecka sprang out, too, and explored the old familiar places of their birth home. Rebecka’s dog Svartan ran with the children, barking happily and playing with the kids, biting and snipping at their clothes and running with his mouth open, his red tongue hanging out from his mouth and flapping in the wind that was caused by his jolting speed. His yellow fur shone in the sunlight, competing with the pale braids of Rebecka.

Tor came out from the barn, and disappeared behind another, while Sigrid appeared from the forest line and went behind the house again. Rebecka came back to the well and started to pump, until the fresh water came up to the earth. She laughed and splashed it towards Svartan, who barked his response and licked her face.

Hoss stepped down and gave his hand to Elin, who was expecting him with her own hand extended out. Her eyes were glowing warmly and the first freckle had appeared below her eye. “Your home is wonderful, too, Erik, but this one is so dear to us.” She kissed his cheek happily and tugged his hand to make him follow her to the house. They found closed trunks and furniture that was covered with sheets to protect them from dust, and a chimney that needed to be checked to see if it could still pull the smoke up. Elin took a white apron from the rack in the kitchen, dusted it with vigor, and laughed at the flying specks that flew out from the embroidered hems to land on her.

“It seems the cottage was waiting for us to be back, don’t you see?” She chuckled and smiled and danced around the great room and opened the windows and pulled away the curtains. “Hoss, why don’t you go and chop wood. I want to cook. And clean. And bathe”, she added, smiling at him, and the pearl white teeth gave him an encouraging grin. Hoss almost forgot to breathe at the sight of his wife, who was back at the same feel as when he had found her only a year ago himself.

“Hoss, are you all right? You look like you’re just about to cry.”

He was, but he hid it from her by taking her under his heavy arms. “I don’t know what God had in mind when he sent me here last spring, but I can’t be but grateful that he did so in any case”, he whispered to her ear and smelled her cardamom brown hair that had a faint scent of lemon and ginger in it. Her hands were firm and strong around him like the branches of the pine trees outside, and she stood tall and robust and her spirit responded to his so full of life that Hoss was almost ready to die.

She smiled at him and kept her face very close to his, pulling her head only so far that she could watch him to the eyes and examine his face very thoroughly with her own shining eyes. “Gods can be awful good sometimes, Erik min.”

‘My Hoss.’

Maybe he had just died after all.

* * *

The dream was back, and Hoss knew he was in a dream from the familiar feeling that it was all very real. But he lifted his wings and stretched them to hold his balance on top of the cliff, and peered toward pines and the spruces to see his spouse.

A small mouse caught his attention, and he thrust himself down to catch the buoyant currents of the winds, and dove into the woods to see what bigger game would be chasing the small rodents.

When he passed the surface of the treetops, he had changed into an owl and he hooted to call his spouse, but he was distracted by little shrews and squirrels, too much. His curiosity took a hold of him and he tried to open a hedgehog that had curled into a ball. He wasn’t an owl anymore, but a fox, with a red coat and a white tip of a tail, and his black paws were being stung by the spikes of the little animal.

A crane cried to him from a swamp lake. He pranced towards the voice, without caring what appearance he had taken this time, and followed the call of his wife.

* * *

Two horses were nibbling the twigs and the brushes, pulling out the fresh green branches and playing with the grass on the ground. One was black and stout with white markings on the head and three white stockings; the other one a lean chestnut with an abundant mane and a willowy move.

Two figures were standing and looking over the view at a canyon, which was full of dogwood with thousands and thousands of blossoms on every tree. The other figure, standing a bit taller and quite some bulkier, held the other one from her shoulders and pointed at the trees and the ferns that were filling the canyon and painting it with all the colors of spring. The less tall figure leaned against the tall one and breathed deeply the hovering scent of blooming nature, and laughed audibly to the wind, hanging glass bells on the paths of the breezes with every giggle.

“It’s beautiful, Hoss.” Elin admired the view and touched the trees as they walked by them, and tried to extend her head as far up and towards the flowers as she could within the reach of her neck. Her eyes were glowing warmly above her golden freckles, and the steel-gray glimmer had been softened to spring sky clearness.

“I was hoping you’d say that”, Hoss answered, and picked up some ferns from the ground. “This used to be sort of a special place for me. I… I ain’t never took nobody else here.” He took a gold back fern and pressed it against his hand, and the golden dust spread on his already tanned skin.

Elin watched his hands while they moved, and smiled at the dust. “It’s like from the stars above us on the sky”, she said, delighted. Hoss smiled, with a touch of wistful memories in the look of his face where the emotions were so easy to read.

Once, he had wanted to bring someone to this canyon, but she had been very sick, very close to die, and returning to this place had been just a painful idea to avoid for quite some time. He didn’t feel that he was all whole and healed even now, but the company of Elin made him able to see the beauty again and to hold on to it even through the aching memories that were still intertwined with its uniqueness. Elin stood beside him, looked at his troubled face and the drops of dew in his cornflower blue eyes, and waited. She allowed him to go through whatever it was that was wailing at the back of his head. When she was sure he had come far enough, she gave her hand to him and patted the back of her own hand. “Try it on me.”

Hoss pressed a gold back fern on her hand, and the gold dust made her smile and wash away some of the hurt that had bothered him deep down in his big and hidden heart. A little sparkle was lit on his eyes, and he pressed one more on the cheek of Elin. She pulled her head away in surprise, and blinked heavily. “What was that for?”

“I tried to see if it could match the color of your freckles. They’re pretty.”

She took the plants in her own hand, and pressed them on his cheek, making him blink this time. “Now you’ll look the same. But you don’t have any of your own, so maybe it isn’t enough.” Her fingers tried to put golden color on his cheeks and she chuckled deep from her throat. “I could live the whole of my life in this moment, if I could choose”, she said, and made him smile, too.

“Wouldn’t that be just somethin’.” Hoss looked at his wife and wondered, where she got all that understanding for him and his thoughts even though he had never spoken about all parts of his life or all of his losses to her. “What did I ever do right to deserve you, Elin?”

She looked at the ferns in his hands, touched their leaves and pressed her fingers on his face. “You became worthy of my attention, of course.”

“You stop that, will you?” Hoss said with mock irritation, and ducked very quickly to be able to toss Elin over his shoulder. Her surprise came out as exclamations and screams.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing to me, Erik?”

“You sit still so I can look at you”, he said, and set her on the ground under a tree very gently. She leaned her elbows on the ground and narrowed her eyes to shade them from the sun, and looked at the lush environment lazily.

Hoss lay next to her, leaning on his elbow and staring at her body with an intensity that usually made her very nervous and ready to erupt in verbal or physical reactions. He was trying to make her figure plump up from the sheer force of his blue eyes, and Elin felt sometimes half frustrated and half amused from that look, depending on her own mood.

“You can’t stare it out”, she told him and covered her abdomen with her hand.

Hoss shook his head and tried to look somewhere else. “It’s just that I can’t stop thinking how peculiar it is. It’s so tiny and small and only God knows if it’s even certain yet.” He frowned slightly, a bit in wonder and a bit puzzled, and his mouth followed the expressions and the feelings with a thoughtful purse. “Still it feels like the biggest thing that ever happened in my life.”

“But pray for it to be all good until the end”, Elin whispered, and held her hand out for him. “It would be very hard alone.”

Hoss took her hand and stroked the two plain golden rings in her ring finger with his thumb . She lay idly on the ground and let the sun shine on her face and her closed eyes, and Hoss leaned closer to count her freckles. Her eyes opened slightly and observed his concentrated look hazily.

“What are you looking at?”

“Them freckles.”

“What about them?”

“They look like they were made of that fudge.”

She laughed low from her throat and looked at him in the eyes, with a sparkle in the gray veil of them. “Are you planning to eat them?”

Hoss came a bit closer yet. “That’s the bestest idea I’ve heard today.”

* * *

Hoss took Tor often with him, to follow him with his work or to just learn to keep company to the boy. Today, he had taken him to the site where they were building the house. He had gotten used to also taking him to ride the fences of the Ponderosa. Sometimes the boy would be catching strays or learning other ranch errands with Ben, Joe or Adam, whenever he wasn’t required at school. The boy was a quick learner and could be outdoors for hours and hours without getting tired, and could concentrate on his schooling much better when he knew he’d have his fair share of outdoor life ahead of him in his free time.

Hoss enjoyed the time with the boy and could proudly show his skills of hunting and tracking to his brothers and Faffa Ben, and his lean fingers would skin the game and see to the pelts quickly and efficiently as if he was born to do just that. Tor’s able hands were an asset at the construction site where the house was going up, too, and his slender figure could reach the most places where the wood and the nails were needed, when he climbed around the house’s frame like an odd-sized chipmunk. His happiness over the things he was able to finish reminded Hoss very much about the boy’s mother.

Now, they were riding back, and in the correct angle of the sunlight Tor looked like he had been embedded to his horse all and completely, and his effortless progression made Hoss smile at his own large figure and more effort-taking ride.

When they got close enough to the big stone on which Elin had used to wait for Hoss the last summer, it was clear that something was wrong at the Creek. Hoss could tell it right away, and also Tor’s posture had started to twitch nervously, making his spotted gelding toss his head and dance on the ground. They rode into the shady yard, and their appearance made the two girls run at them, grabbing their legs and their clothes and sobbing in scared cries.

“Hoss, Hoss!” Sigrid wailed and took the his hands in her small ones when he had dismounted. “Mamma is real sick and she… she didn’t let us come near. She told us to go away!”

Hoss bent down to take the little ones in his arms and tried to control his own worry. “Where is your Mama, sweethearts?” His throat was thick and his chest was aching, but he covered his anxiety from the girls and only a small tremble escaped to his voice.

“She’s… she’s in the bath house”, said Sigrid, and looked at Hoss with her eyes wide from fear for the unknown ailment. “She didn’t tell us what’s wrong, Hoss, she didn’t let us go in…” her cries were suffocated in his dusty shirt, and he held her head in his big hand for a moment.

“Tor… come here.” The boy had just stood motionless for a moment, without being able to move anywhere. Hoss looked at him and nailed him to his place with his serious stare. “I need you to take care of your sisters now, Thor.” He patted the heads of the sobbing little ones and stood up, and took their hands to give them to Tor.

“Take the girls in, will you?” His voice was soft and confident, making the girls believe he was going to fix it all, but Tor was growing up. He could see the hesitation and grief in Hoss’ eyes, and there was a will to come and help him with whatever it was he needed to do. “Be calm, Thor, the girls will need you with them, all right?”

For a moment, Hoss could see Tor hesitate, but then he took the hands of Sigrid and Rebecka in his own and escorted them in. Their language had changed to Swedish and its foreign lull seemed to hush the worst anxiety of the girls.

The worst fears of Hoss lay still ahead. He walked to the bath house with long steps that seemed to weigh more than the mountains beyond the border region, and when he reached the little building in the shade, further away from the house, he had to stop and breathe to brace himself.

When he opened the door, he didn’t see anything at first, before his eyes got more accustomed to the lack of daylight. Finally he could spot Elin in the darkest corner. She was curled into a lump and her body shook heavily at every sob that pierced Hoss’ heart with a painful sting.

He saw blood.

Too much blood, down at her skirts and on the floor and at her feet, as she hadn’t been able to fight it with anything to wipe it away.

He heard the longing and the lament in the sobs of his wife and he didn’t know what to do beside step next to her and try to hold her in his arms. She tried to shake his hands away fiercely. “Don’t touch at me! Don’t touch me!”

Hoss ignored her shouts and pressed her against his own strong body and pressed her head against his chest, while his heart was pounding fiercely and his own hot tears battled behind his eyelids to erupt freely from his eyes. Her hopeless grief was so open and vulnerable. Hoss cried, too, but his tears were held inside and only his heart was bleeding under his skin. It had been part of him, too, and the joy of becoming a father had been built up as strong and as quickly as it had been taken away from him.

Again.

There had been one miscarriage in the early winter as well. She had been alone in the house with only her children and Hop Sing, and even Tor had been out somewhere hunting and laying traps.

When Hoss came home, he found a gray and a limp and weary Elin who lay at the corner of their bed, staring at the wallpaper and the carpets and the cracks in the wood. The doctor had seen to her physical care, but his help could only recover her health when it came to her body. Her spirits had been down for a long time, she had been avoiding Hoss’ touch and the gray glitter of her eyes had been stunned into a tone of ashes. For some time she had been like a ghost, scaring her children and her in-laws and vowing Hoss for secrecy over her condition – even if the rest of his family might have guessed it, by far.

She had been a portrait of doubt and insecurity, a picture of fear and defeat under a cover of yielding to a fate that seemed forbidden from her, and the last ones of her freckles had slowly died while she had cherished her sorrow until she would fall asleep at night, her head resting on Hoss’ shoulder.

Hop Sing had talked to Hoss. ‘Missy Eelyn very sick’, he had said, so wearily that Hoss had for a moment doubted if it was their old flare-tempered cook he had known all of his life. ‘Very sick in the heart. May take long time to heal.’

Hoss had spent a lot of time praying to God and trying to find answers, but they were not appearing to him in forms that he could grab and understand. He had watched the cinnamon glow of her hair fade away and her smile grow but distant, and he didn’t know how to bring her back. Until she had been troubled by her womanly body again, and the exasperation and relief had been resolved into grateful tears.

‘Hoss… Erik… I think I’m normal.’

Whispered from behind a mask of joyful tears, Hoss couldn’t have had imagined any more alleviating words, and when she buried her face in his neck once more, her tears didn’t feel like burning ice or freezing blood anymore. Kissing her forehead and her cheeks and the point of her nose had returned the stars to her eyes, and finally she had let him taste from her lips the fullness of the voluptuous life that had been shackled under her parched skin for such a long time.

And now the doubts and the fears had tripped her again and made her fall even harder. Hoss pressed his head over her soft hair and held her very tight, feeling guilty over his own expectations that had been so much and how they, too, had struck Elin with their weight to add to her loss.

“Hoss, do you regret marrying me?” she asked, and clenched her fists under her chin. Hoss shook his head, so vigorously that her body shook in his hold as well.

“No.” He never would.

“What if I can’t give you children, ever?” She lifted her reddened eyes to him and they looked at him in despair.

He stroked her hair away from her face and looked at her very gently. “You gave me three already, Elin. Three fine kids.”

“But I’m just such a half of a woman.” Her breath was whining, there was no force left in her to do more than sob silently. “You could have married anybody young and have a dozen of children, instead of an old widow.”

“None of them would make up a fraction of you”, he said, feeling his words were flat and redundant. He held her close and tried to remain calm when he saw the worry in her look.

She wiped her eyes. “They say that only those who are not fit to live come out. Why wasn’t it fit to live?”

Hoss didn’t know.

He was questioned by doubts, too. Had he had delivered so many new lives into this world, that God had decided he would never see the birth of his own child? Or was he born so big that he was not destined to have a kid of his own? Wasn’t he fit to give Elin what she wanted so much? Why did it make her hurt so terribly when she couldn’t provide him with what he had hoped for, but only very secretly, for all of his life? His questions were hurling and tightening a knot around his heart, but he couldn’t voice them because he had to be strong for Elin.

Hoss wasn’t any God who could tell when kids would come or if they wouldn’t come. He had to live how He saw fit, and there was no fighting to His will. All he could do was to surrender to what was to come. He would cry his sorrows out in the solace of the canyons and the cliffs, where only the eagles and the mountain lions would hear.

She breathed heavily against his shoulders and sighed, when the sobs started to fade away. “I’m so tired, Hoss.”

“You rest, my love. I’ll carry you through this.” He lit up the fire in the stove to heat the water, and unwrapped her gently out from her clothes, and washed her weak and lifeless body with some soothing words here and there. He went to the house to bring blankets and towels to which he would wrap her worn body, and carried her over the path and the yard to the house.

He sent the kids to the barns to sleep and patted Tor’s shoulder. The boy fought his own tears very bravely and took his sisters away when Hoss told him to go. He made a note to remember to compliment his grown-up character, as soon as he could. “Your Mama’s plenty sick, li’l ones. She needs to rest.”

‘She very sick in the heart. May take long time to heal.’

Hop Sing’s words rang in his head, and he wanted to make sure Elin wouldn’t suffer any painful moment alone.

His Elin.

His heart.

His everything.

* * *

Very soon Elin was up and cooking and weeding the garden and counting the eggs. Her body recovered quickly, and her smile was often directed at her children and at Hoss, but the stars that used to shine from her eyes were dim and from a time long past, and the smell of saffron and cardamom was replaced by the scent of dark bread and potatoes in her kitchen. Hoss was scared to leave her alone, but she assured him she would be fine and tend to the garden and the piglets with her children. She followed the children who went fishing and told Hoss that she’d be able to go lay traps with Tor.

He was reluctant to let her go, and he didn’t want to leave the sight of her.

Sigrid made him change his mind.

“Hoss”, she said one evening, when the sun had set down and they were walking barefoot from the outhouse, to which she didn’t dare to go alone in the dark. “Are there too many ghosts in here?”

Hoss was puzzled. “What’ya mean by that, Secret?”

She turned around. “You don’t see them, do you? But Mamma feels them, all too heavy for her.” She turned back and led Hoss back to the house, walking in her white lacy nightgown like a little fairy herself.

It made Hoss very sad.

But it also made him go back to the house they had begun to build last summer and start working on it with his brothers again.

* * *

Ben was looking at the frame of the house, which was now almost complete. The paneless windows were looking back at him, and the door had been replaced by planks nailed over it, when Adam had gotten an idea to show Tor how to carve and lacquer the door’s surface nicely. Rooms were not furnished and the wallpaper and coats of paint were missing, too, and the barn for the animals was just a shack, when nobody had exactly decided how many critters it should serve in the end.

Ben smiled at the shape of the heavy-built log house, and its elegant additions that had been added to shape it to something special and unique to stand out from nature and welcome any guests. He leaned over the shovel he had used to dig holes for the fence posts, and wiped his forehead free from sweat. “It looks like a home already, Hoss.” His smile was bright and networks of wrinkles surrounded his eyes when he gazed at the house with a full heart. “A lot of room for any little ones to run, too.”

His well intended smile grew grim, when a dark cloud wrapped the face of his son and he saw Hossä whole posture crease up in furrows, his lonely eyes sinking so deep under his brow that their blue glint disappeared. Worry and sorrow covered his face in front of his father. Hoss had to turn his face a bit away when small currents of grief were trying to twitch his mouth and wriggle around his forehead and his cheekbones and press his eyebrows together.
Ben let the shovel fall and stepped closer. Hoss wasn’t able to look, but eventually he felt the hesitant, light touch of the hand of his Pa on his shoulder.

“I’m… Hoss, I didn’t know.” Ben’s voice was thick and he was blinking, trying to find the right thing to say.

“How could you done know?” Hoss said, and sat heavily on the ground. He leaned his hand on his folded knee, his other leg resting all straight, and his head bent down very slowly.

Ben put his other hand on his shoulder, too, and even though his voice was muffled, his hands didn’t tremble. “I’m sorry, Hoss. I wish there was… there was something I could do.”

Hoss looked at the ground and the house and the trees surrounding it and thought that he saw butterflies by the little flowers at the edge of the clearing. “There ain’t nothing nobody can do, Pa.”

Ben swallowed hard behind his son, and looked at the mountainous curve of Hoss’ tilted back. He came down to sit beside his son, a bit behind him to let him hide his face, and crossed his hands and hugged his knees loosely.
“Why can’t I be fit to be a Pa?” Hoss blinked and gave his question to the mountains that were hovering far back on the horizon, and fiddled with the twigs and sticks that lay on the ground below him. Ben looked at the large arch of his body, but he didn’t know how to help his son.

At the age of three or four, when Hoss had been small enough to be beaten by Adam in games or in their childish fights, he had been able to lift up his weeping son from the ground and dust his clothes off. ‘Why can’t I be big enough to fight back, Pa?’ he had asked. Ben’s strong hands had squeezed his shoulders and sometimes embraced him in a stolen, secret hug between the two of them, and he had ensured him with his big voice. ‘Son, you’ll grow up soon, don’t worry.’ He had talked to Adam and fixed the bad.

But he couldn’t fix this one, and his deep brown eyes were rimmed with the shade of red but not a single emotion escaped.

They sat for a long time in silence, and finally Hoss spoke. “Pa… you remember when Joe was supposed to marry Laura White.”

“Yes, son.” It had been a lot of heartache for his youngest son, for the whole family, so much death had been seen by his young boys of whom he had cared for since each of their childhoods.

“We… we gave him a cradle. It felt so right and Adam made it for him.” Joe had been smiling, and laughing, and Hoss had patted his back so strongly. Behind his crossed arms Joe had been very touched about the dream for the future, with a whole new excitement in his eyes he hadn’t really considered before. He had been so young. “I wouldn’t wanna… I mean I couldn’t…” He was struggling. “Pa, it would be so hard.”

Ben reached out his hand and touched the back of his little boy who had grown so large. “I’ll let the boys know, Hoss.” His voice was a low whisper, too. He hesitated for a moment, and lowered his head. “We have Joe’s old cradle stored at the Ponderosa, if it should be called for.” He chuckled barely audibly, judging for a moment if he could say out aloud what he was thinking, and decided in the end that Hoss was strong enough. “Although, son, if you one day have a boy like yourself, a rowing boat might be a better fit.”

Hoss couldn’t help a smile coming out from the corner of his mouth, even though his eyes were still lit by the crystal tears that the mix of the past and the not yet come had brought to his eyes. A little low rumble of a voice came from deep down of his stomach. “I reckon that’s the case, Pa.” He stood up, and dusted his trousers and put his hat on his head. “Come on, Pa. We’ve got a house to build.”

* * *

Hoss dreamt about a fox that came to eat the eggs from the bird’s nest and licked it’s lips, very satisfied with himself. It made him perspire in cold sweat, and he turned, only to see a fish being caught by a hook. The pair of hands took a knife and opened the belly of the plump fish, and spooned out all the red roe to be eaten away as a delicacy. He was a little bear cub who wanted to escape from the rivers filled with fish, but he was attacked by an eagle that snipped his skin very hard and pierced it with its beak.

Sigrid would wake him up from these dreams that were not nightmares but made him anxious, and her little hands would stroke his frizzy hair while she would climb next to him when Elin was deep asleep.

“Carrying the ghosts will be so heavy, Hoss. Don’t let them take over.” She would fall asleep next to him, without waking her mother who lay on the other side of Hoss, her eyelashes brushing her own golden freckles in a satisfied way, and her breathing coming to an even rhythm very soon when her nightmares would be prevented by the presence of Hoss.

* * *

Hoss sat still, leaning his back on the trunk of the tree and his other hand to his bent knee. His fingers were playing with the dust and the dead plants on the ground, and his eyes were wandering from them to the horizon and back again.

He didn’t know what to do.

So often he had tried to pray God to make his thoughts clear and give him the words to say, to relieve the pain or to solve the problems that swirled in his head, but as often as not the answers were not in a form he could understand easily. Hoss thought for a moment that it would be wonderful to stand as large and monumental as the tall pines all around him, their toes ground deep in the ground and their tops reaching up to the high skies, while their large chests were hard and impenetrable for almost anything but steel and iron. It was so much more troublesome to be a small and humble Hoss, who had to face the thoughts and the words and the demands and the expectations alike.

Hoss adjusted his hat and rose slowly, and dusted his trousers to avoid the sting of an unexpected little twig when he would mount up, and gave a final look into the opening mountain country in front of his eyes.

Maybe the pines hadn’t made him any wiser, but then again, he could always return to them once more.

* * *

Elin was packing up the house again, to wrap it up to be able to move the trunks and her favorite furniture to their new house. It was not all finished and polished, but they could move the belongings in slowly and live at the Ponderosa until all of the interiors were done. Hoss had returned from a business errand at Virginia City, and tried to be of use, although he often thought of the wrong things to take with and selected odd pairs to say farewell to. Elin was smiling faintly at his honest attempt and patting him on his arm, or on his hand, and her hems swept the dusty floor while she meandered around in the little house.

A needle came to her way at an odd place, and pierced her fingertip, exposing a droplet of bright red blood that fell on the floor.

A little tear came out of her eye and a small sob was audible, when her unprepared nerves couldn’t hold the overt reaction behind. She put her finger in her mouth to suck at the bleeding wound, but the tears in her eyes forgot to disappear.

Suddenly, Tor sprang up and clenched his fists. “You’ve done it to her, Hoss!” he shouted, and aimed his borderless anger at his step-father. His eyes were flaring, and his teeth were rattling together when he tried to scream out all that was troubling him at the same. “You’ve made her so weak! She was never so easy to wound before you were married!”

Elin’s eyes were wide and shocked, and she was unable to speak or move. Hoss stood up. “Outside, Thor.”

“I wish you would have never come!” Tor Emil’s mouth was twisted and curled into an odd expression that had never been on his face before, and finding ways to put it so took a lot of effort from him. Rebecka had frozen on her seat, and she held her dog from his neck while her eyes remained as wide as her mothers. Hoss felt very lucky to know that Sigrid was away with the sheep.

Hoss inhaled very deeply and looked at Tor very grimly. “I said outside.” He raised his hand to point at the door, and his voice was very silent. A part of his reason was panicking inside his head, since he had never thought he would use this tone with the young ones, but he knew Rebecka didn’t need to hear what Tor had to say. Nor Elin, who had fallen all pale and forgotten her bleeding finger, which hung loosely upon her dress and spotted it with small droplets of her blood.

His heart was hurt from the whole idea that Tor could believe such a thing, that from the bottom of his heart he could have made Elin so sad and so moody and so vulnerable to cry so often. But his sorrow was nowhere near the pain he had seen in Elin’s eyes.

Tor walked down the steps of the porch and tucked his hands in his pockets, and his feet kept kicking the ground and his shoulders crunched down in defense and in anger. Hoss tucked his hands in his pockets, too, and for a moment they just faced each other back to back, without saying a word. Hoss turned around, and looked at the tense and clenched figure of the boy who wasn’t so little anymore.

“Thor.” Hoss tried to speak out as plainly as he could. He could see him turning his head a bit, but he wasn’t taking his gaze away from the road that led away to the outside world.

“Thor. I’m talking to you.” Hoss watched the boy in silence, wondering what to do. Pure nausea was trying to climb up his throat, when he realized that the boy could as well be expecting him to put his hands upon him in hate. Hoss pressed his fists very tight and closed in his pockets, and kept his voice very controlled.
“Thor, your Mama’s been unwell. She’s been going through a lot of bad times lately and it ain’t any good to talk like this to her when she ain’t all right.” Hoss held a pause, groping for the words with which he could explain to the boy. He was looking at a very scared boy, who was worried over his mother and didn’t know what to do to help her. It made Hoss very sad. “Your Mama’s been very sick and there ain’t a mountain I wouldn’t turn upside down to make her better. But there is no cure but time, and we’ll all have to wait.”

Tor remained motionless, eyeing the ground under his boots, and the anger and worry boiling around him was being mixed in the heat of the summer day. “But she… she was never so sad before you married.” Tor’s shoulders shook a bit, when a little sob came out. “She was… strong.”

Hoss lowered his head, and tried to reach out to touch Tor’s shoulder, hesitating at the end and letting his hand drop. “I’m really sorry, too, son. I don’t know what to say to make you feel better, or what to make you believe I’m doing all my best to take her hurt away.”

The door opened, and Elin came out. “Tor… Hoss…” she swallowed, and walked to her son. “Tor, look at me.” She turned her son around, and peered down at him, refusing to kneel in front of him as he was not a child anymore. “You’re trying to solve problems that belong between me and Hoss, and you shouldn’t.” The boy winced and tried to pull his hands away from his mother’s grip, but he wasn’t able to. Elin’s strength was coming back and she held him down with ease.

“Tor Emil, I haven’t been well. Maybe part of it is combined to me and Hoss being married, but it’s not because of Hoss. Look at me, son.” Her eyes were hard as steel. “Do you believe that I would stand here for a moment, if Hoss was being bad to me?” Tor tried to avoid her eyes, but she took a firm hold of his chin and forced him to face her stare. “Do you?”

Tor looked into her eyes very long, before he was able to answer. “No.” Elin released his chin, and the boy chuckled. “I guess you’d take your iron pan and hit him on the head if he was.”

His comment made a little laughter erupt from the lips of his mother. Elin covered her mouth with her hand, but a giggle was coming out of her lips while she thought of the concrete meaning of her son’s idea.

Rebecka pushed her head out from the door. “Tor, do you still say bad things about Hoss?”

Tor erupted in a relieved laughter, too. “No, Rebecka, I don’t. Mamma will hit my head with the frying pan if I will.” His sister shrieked in a shrill tone, and jumped at her brother, motioning the swing of the described weapon with a loud shout of “Bang-nnngggg!”

Elin erupted in roaring laughter and leaned against her knees, slapping them and wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. “You must be right, Rebecka, in his case it would indeed be a very loud bang!” she laughed, and made a motion of swinging an iron pan herself. “Bang-nnggg!”

Hoss didn’t understand the meaning of her words, but he recognized the familiar glimmer of the crystals in her gray eyes, and the first sight of light on her cheeks that anticipated the birth of her cinnamon freckles, and laughed out loud, too. She gave her hand to him, and eyed him shyly from under her brow, but she couldn’t hold back the chiming giggles that bubbled out from her heart. “I should go inside and thank that needle”, she whispered quickly to Hoss.

He agreed. It had burst a bubble and let the ailment come out.

* * *

Hoss was apprehensive to touch his wife when the sun had gone down. Elin stood beside the bed, facing her back to him, and combed the soft hair of hers which had returned back from the lifeless veil to the floating mist of brown froth. She put the comb down and turned around slowly, and the little birds and butterflies she had embroidered carefully at the neck of her gown were fluttering their wings at him very nervously. “I’m still scared, Hoss”, she said, and bit her lip.

Hoss stood up and took her hands and stroked over her lean fingers with his thumb. He couldn’t say that he wasn’t scared, or afraid to let his hope build up again. He looked at the two golden rings she never took off of her ring finger, and kissed them gently. “Together?”

She pressed her lips on his hands, too. “Together.”

* * *

Elin and Hoss were walking in the soon-to-be finished house. The windows were open and the floors and walls set firmly together, and they were scanning the rooms and the dimensions, thinking who would sleep where and what kind of furniture would they set in certain places.

Hoss led Elin by her hand to the upstairs, and peeked curiously from under the hat’s rim, biting his lower lip and letting his blue eyes be lit up in a shining dream of the future to come. The closure of the building project was making his heart pound in a completely new way, and the fingers of his wife felt so alive and throbbing in his own large hand, that he didn’t know which way to hold them to calm down.

Elin was laughing, too, and touched all the planks and the logs and the details of the fine carvings that had been set here and there. “And this, here, will be our bedroom”, she said, and let go of his hand. She stood in the middle of a large room and leaned backwards, her palms resting on her round hips. She changed her voice to a low crumble. “This is the place, where I will say I love you very much, Eilynn“, she said, imitating Hoss quite poorly. Hoss laughed, and followed her performance, leaning his side and his elbow to the door frame and tilting his hat back. A chortle came out of his mouth through the gap of his exposed teeth.

Elin turned around, crossed her fingers under her chin, and fluttered her eyelashes. A lot of the whites were visible, when she rolled her eyes from one corner of the ceiling to the other. This time her voice was shrill and chiming. “Oh, but Erik“, she peeped. “You look so strong and scary, do not make me afraid!” She pulled the ribbon out of her plait, making her hair unravel almost by itself.
Changing her voice back to the low imitation of Hoss, she continued. “You resent me, my wife? Let me teach you a lesson…” When Elin changed from high and pompous giant to a faint little china doll, her voice became shrill and shrieking again. “But, my husband, be gentle to me! I’m but a poor little girl…”

Hoss was laughing at her vivid performance and the mockery she provided with expressive eyes and exaggerated gestures, he laughed so hard that tears came to his eyes. He spread his hands out to block her way. “So you need a lesson, little lady?”

Elin bit her lip with a spark in her eye. Her hair hung open and waved down at the same rhythm in which she was twitching, trying to find a direction to distract Hoss and run away from his reach. After some jolts and moves, they both made a final jump to different directions and she was able to run through the doorway, down the stairs and to the kitchen, where her escape was blocked by a door that was nailed shut. She stood there, panting, and leaned her back to the wall and glowered at Hoss, but what he saw in her eyes was certainly not fear.

* * *

Adam and Joe had helped Hoss to bring some home-like assets to the house, in trunks, in boxes and in various sizes and shapes. Elin was nearly flying around in the house, enjoying the smell of the still freshly cut wood that hung on the furniture and the walls. Some pack horses and mules had been brought to the new house, and a pack of sheep had been counted and recounted a few times. Hoss had brought Elin’s spinning wheel to the great room and set it by a large fireplace, and the sound of her stepping on the foot-piece had echoed already once in the heart of the still growing house. She had asked her girls to learn the art of the spindle, but they found better things to do outdoors.

“Did you think of a name, yet?” Joe asked, and nodded towards the house. He leaned his foot on the rail of the fence and let the rest of his slender body follow.

Hoss sneered, in a way that was about to become a smirk a bit more than a sign of peeving. “Nah, brother.” The smirk took over. “We had some talks, but we couldn’t settle on one thing. She says it’s Elinslott. Her castle.” He chuckled. “Her kingdom.”

Joe grinned at his brother and pushed himself away from the fence, when he saw Adam and Tor coming back from the back yard. Svartan was loping around their legs, with his tongue hanging at the other side of his mouth.

Hoss patted his thigh and made the dog take a leap start to come and greet him. A huge puddle of mud had formed in the yard when the animals and the furniture had been moved around to and fro, and a sudden but short rain had swept over the country a while ago; Svartan ran elegantly around the puddle and came to push his head at Hoss. “There you go, feller, what’ve you been up to?”

The dog closed his eyes when Hoss scratched his scalp with a rough hand.

The dog returned to Tor and Adam, going around the mud with his tail dancing at the rhythm of the lope, and Hoss walked behind the critter a bit more slowly. A slow grin appeared on his square face, when an idea came to his mind. “How does the pasture look, Adam?”

“As usual. Wide and rough all the ways you decide to look at.” Adam pushed his hat a bit back and leaned one of his hands on his hip, with a lost dimple below his distant look. “Although I have to admit it looks like the house would be a lot further away from the Ponderosa, when all that landscape hides the roads and the cows in between.” He paused to look at the devious smirk of his middle brother, and covered his mouth with the back of his fist.

Tor had bent down to scratch Svartan, and Hoss reached his long arms over him very quietly, until he was able to grab a firm hold of the boy. Svartan barked at him, but he just hung the boy above the puddle and made a gesture to throw him in head first.

“What are you doing, let me go! Let me go!” the boy shouted, and screamed when Hoss lowered his head a bit more. The boy’s legs were kicking hard and furious, but he wasn’t a match for the monumental powers of Hoss, who kept laughing at him with a rumble and a bellow from the bottom of his belly, but who held him so firmly that he would not fall.

Hoss laughed – but only until Tor was yanked out of his hands by Adam, and he felt a burst of energy from his younger brother’s hands, when Joe suddenly jumped at him by surprise and pushed him face down to the mud. Both Tor and Adam erupted in laughter, when Hoss got on his four feet in the mud and thrust his hat on the ground.

“Dad burn it, Little Joe…”

Joe tried to run away, but his unstoppable giggles diverted his attention, and his boots slipped on the ground, giving Hoss a chance to grab his feet and pull him down to the mud. His giggling was muted by his bigger brother, who took a hold of his shirt and pressed him to the ground. Joe gathered his defense and tried to kick Hoss away from him, but he was able to make him loosen his grip only slightly, even though it was slightly enough for Joe to swing his fist at his brother.

Adam laughed at the wrestling brothers, until he felt a sharp kick behind his calves and he was tackled down to the ground by Tor. “That’s for sneaking up on Hoss!” the boy snarled, and didn’t even bother to hide his smirk while he jumped to the puddle of mud himself, too. The four men, younger or older, became a one bunch of longer or shorter legs, swinging or twisting arms and mud-soaked pieces of clothing, where somewhere a hat would fly away and somewhere the shrill laughter of the boy would appear – being followed by a worried shout about watching the boy, who had no place in the fight.

“Loooooot bli, alla!”

A familiar voice stopped the fight to where it had started, and all of the men froze to their places. Adam and Joe rose slowly, and Hoss turned from his defeated position to face the ground, then the toes, then the hems, following the apron up to the waist and to the chest of his wife, until an angry cough made him lift his eyes to her flaring nostrils and blazing eyes. He rose up, and ducked his head a bit to look shorter in front of her.

Elin didn’t give a dime for the sheepish look on Joe or the pressed lips of Adam. She looked directly at Hoss, and ran her forefinger over his bared upper body before she started poking his chest quite painfully.

“How many buttons lost, my love?” she grunted, and pulled a tear at the elbow of his shirt. “How many tears to fix on your shirt this time?” She walked a step closer and made Hoss swallow quite hard under her piercing stare. “And what on earth do you think pulling Tor Emil to this… this… thing.” She ended her sentence in throwing her arms to the air, and turning on her heels. Hoss lifted his hand behind her shoulder, but she stopped him with a frightening howl. “Don’t touch me with those filthy hands! Who drew the first punch?”

Hoss didn’t want to answer.

His wife stalked a few steps away and turned quickly again, her forefinger pointing at Little Joe and Adam. “You two, as well. What right have you to drown my son in this… this… ” she kept pointing at them and the mud in turns. Finally, as she couldn’t find a thing to say, she turned towards Tor. “Son, you go and light up the fires in the bath house.” Tor started to walk sideways, watching his mother apprehensively, and Elin cocked an eyebrow at him. “I don’t see too much of ‘quick’ in you, do I?”

Her comment made her son spurt away and left the men to face Elin’s contempt alone. She eyed them silently for a long time, and breathed heavily. Finally she turned around, with a quiet mutter of ‘men’ at her lips. Adam’s mouth was starting to twitch, and he had to push Joe’s hand away when the brother started to dust off his black mud-soaked shirt. Joe grinned at him a bit sheepishly, and both of them were casting their eyes both at Hoss and at Elin.

A slow smile climbed along on Hoss’ cheeks and reached his blue eyes together with a glimmer, and he winked to his brothers. “Stay put, and watch. You’re about to see something funny.” As he put his muddy hat on his head, Adam leaned forward and Joe held his chin. He sneaked up on steaming Elin as quietly as he could, and from a few steps away he finally jumped at her and grabbed her in his arms.

“What on earth are you doing? Let me go!” Elin screamed, and tried to wriggle out of his muddy hug, but she was no match for his force, either. “I told you to let me go!” Her legs kicked as effortlessly as Tor’s a moment ago, and Hoss pressed his head against her soft hair and her white cheeks and her white blouse, and rubbed his cheek on her head. He turned his wife around, and pressed a wet kiss in the middle of her face.

“I love you so”, he said, and ignored her wiggling and shrieking and the sassy cusses in Swedish she spat at his chest. He bent down to smell her hair and pressed his nose at her neck, and hugged her very hard again, making her shouting if possible even louder.

Elin’s eyes were burning as hot steel, when he locked her arms at her sides. “You cut me lose this instant, or I’ll nev-…” he silenced her by pressing a muddy hand over her mouth, and made her shiver in anger.

Joe patted Adam on his shoulder. “You… don’t suppose you could do that to Laura Dayton?” Adam didn’t answer, as his mind had become all numb from the scene he was watching.

Hoss raised his muddy finger and painted two lines on Elin’s face. “Here you go, sweet wife, now you have eyebrows. Makes it easier for you to glare.” She gasped, then chuckled, and finally bit her lip.

“I’ll have my revenge!” she bellowed, but her eyes had started to shine with a completely different shade.

Hoss patted her cheek gently and squeezed her close to his body with the other hand. “Just about how are you planning to do that?”

Elin just showed her tongue to him, and he laughed, as he released his hold and set her on the ground an arm’s length away. She shook her hands in the air and gave a sound of ‘yuck’ to the mud, and looked at her apron and her blouse and her hands that were equally dirty. She glared from under her muddy brow to Adam and Joe, and bit her tongue before she was able to speak. “I hope you two won’t ever have wives to suffer this”, she said, and stifled a chuckle that tried to break lose. She turned her attention back to Hoss. “Go wash up for dinner, won’t you? You are starting to lose weight.”

Hoss inhaled, and pressed his fingers on his belly to see the effect. “I surely ain’t, am I?” His frown expressed his uneasiness, and made Elin laugh.
For the second time, Adam and Joe looked at each other with a common feeling of understanding nothing.

Elin looked at the puddle. “Hoss, could you see that the animals won’t be hurt in that mud?” she asked, a bit worriedly.

“I’ll do my best, love.” Hoss took his dripping hat off and shook it a bit, and as it didn’t help, he put it back on his head. He waved his hand at Adam and Joe.

“You heard the lady. Come out of that puddle.” Joe made a face while Adam smirked, but they followed him to find water and soap to accept the invitation for dinner, too stunned to talk.

Hoss strolled towards the bath house, and eyed at the yard. “Where are my two li’l gals? I feel like I’d need a hug right now.”

Elin’s laughter chimed in the humid air behind his back, and it creased his nose in a grin and gave a glint to his blue eyes.

* * *

Hoss was saying good night to the girls, who shared a room together. They had discussed over the matter of the rooms with their mother and Hoss, and come to an agreement that they could be separated when they would feel like it. Tor had been hesitant to move on his own, too; but when the idea of an all new freedom had penetrated his thought, he could have accepted even two or three rooms all the same to be his own.

Rebecka had pushed her head under the blanket but her feet were out. She lay on her belly and a lot of movement under the blanket told Hoss she was making games and stories with the toys she had smuggled in, doing everything else but trying to sleep.

He turned to Sigrid to tuck her under her blanket, but her usually bright eyes were large and troubled. Hoss sat on the bed and patted her hand. “What’s wrong, punkin?”

Sigrid bit her lip a bit hesitantly, and stood upright on the bed. “Hoss… I’d like to talk.” She eyed a bit nervously towards Rebecka’s bed, making Hoss understand she sought privacy. Hoss took her hand and tossed the blanket away, and showed the door to the girl.

“Is it all right for Mama to hear?” he asked, and looked very carefully at the uneasy frown of the girl. “All right. I’ll take you down to the great room, and you can tell me all about it.” He pressed the fingers of the girl to assure her of his alliance and trust, and sat her in an armchair while he himself sat on a settee.

Sigrid flung her legs over the edge of her seat, and came next to Hoss on the settee as an afterthought. “It might require me to whisper”, she said, to explain, and curled her legs under her body. She looked at the wall, the bookshelf, and her knees and then fixed her eyes at Hoss’ hands, before she decided to speak. “Hoss… We were talking yesterday with Rebecka and Tor, if we could call you Papa.” She attempted a frown, but her brow was not yielding to such a glum face with ease. “I know you and Mama told us we can, but we haven’t really couldn’t.”

Hoss smiled at her words, looked at his hands, and then returned his blue eyes to look at Sigrid. “I know it can be hard. I had two Mamas, and Adam even had three, and even though we might not know them all, a new Mama coming to the house was a new Mama coming to the house.”

Sigrid looked at him, her gray eyes full of questions. “That’s not what I meant… I mean, are you sad when we don’t call you Papa?”

Hoss bowed his head, and thought about the question quite long. “I don’t right know myself, Secret”, he finally said. “I’ve never been called Pa, but I’d be real proud if you’d call me Pa, real proud.”

Sigrid lowered her violet-gray gaze for a moment, and tugged her braid absently. “I don’t know why it should be so hard, it’s just a word.” Her face creased up in a baffled way. “But it makes me miss my own Pappa, if I would call you the same.”

Hoss blinked.

Then he breathed in and out quite slowly. Sigrid put her hand on his large fist he hadn’t realized he’d closed, and looked at his face with puzzlement on her own. “Hoss, does it make me bad to miss my own Pappa, even if you would be a very nice Papa to us, too?”

Hoss pressed his lips together, with a faint smile moving the mask of his face and a glow of memories lighting up his eyes. “Sigrid… I had another Mama, too, but sometimes I still hope I would have some memories of my own from the time when my own Mama would sing and play and talk and if I could feel her touch. But it don’t make me remember any worse of my second Mama, Joe’s Mama. I had never called anybody Mama before, but Adam had.”

Hoss didn’t know exactly how to continue, but Sigrid was satisfied. She nodded. “It’s like our Pappa… I remember him very little; I only made an idea of him from what Mamma and Tor have told to me.”

She looked so small and frail, that Hoss had to pull her on his knee. She put her head on his shoulder, and looked at the wall opposing them. Hoss leaned his head on her hair. “You don’t have to call me Pa if it makes you sad. It’d be real nice if calling me Pa would make you happy, but that’s something you can’t make to come just by wanting it very much.”

Sigrid sighed, and sounded a hundred years older of her age. “You’re so nice I’d like to give it a try”, she said, and closed her eyes. “I’d like to make you proud.” She didn’t see the look of his tears behind her crown, when he gathered his composure from the shattered pieces she had set them again.

Hoss pressed a little kiss on her acorn brown hair, and let her rest against his chest. “I’ll be waiting.”

* * *

From the shadow of the upstairs railing, Hoss could have nearly sworn to have heard the pats of a boy’s feet, that didn’t want to be seen. He waited for a moment and stood up, and carried Sigrid to her bed to tuck her under the sheets.

He said good night also to Rebecka’s feet poking out from under her blanket, now still and snoring at a steady pace with her mouth.

* * *

It had been a nice and vivacious evening at the Ponderosa. Adam had invited Laura Dayton again to have dinner with his family. There had been stories, some chattering, and some excited children whose games had broken a vase of flowers inside and further a full sawhorse outside, an event that still remained quite a mystery to all of the adults – and might prevail as such until eternity. Peggy had taken a liking to Svartan, and she also showed her pony to Rebecka, who rode it with determination more than elegance, occasionally well but landing on the ground fairly often.

“Well, it has been a delightful evening, but I’m afraid I must go with Peggy”, Laura Dayton had excused herself, and ridden away with her objecting daughter. Adam had ridden along them to see them home, at least for part of the way. Elin had waved to the girl with her fingers and offered her hearty farewells to the pair, but her complexion was troubled with the events and implications, the ways in which she heard the tones of voices to rise or to fall and saw the hands touching or not touching.

She sat at the porch with Hoss and Ben, and played with her apple green hems and the heavy rings in her ring finger. Her pursed lips showed perplexion and an escaped syrup-colored curl framed her pondering face. Finally she spoke, interrupting the steady puffs of Ben’s pipe.

“I feel sad for him”, she started, and made both of the men surprised. The emotion was broken by a sound of something smashing on the floor inside the house, which was followed by a recognizable “Nononononoonoooo…!” by Little Joe. Elin jumped up and opened the door.

“That’s enough!” she hollered to her kids, and set one fist on her hip, while the other remained at the door. “Up to bed, as if you were there already!” Her stern voice was almost growling, and Hoss and Ben heard squealing apologies as if they came from little mice, before the door closed again. She blinked, and sighed, shaking her head. “I hope they didn’t break anything too dear. Herregud, wild animals…”

She had threatened to leave the children upon the mercy of their Faffa Ben, if they disappointed her and Hoss too many times with their rough behavior, and Hoss had told them how his problems had been fixed in his own childhood. The only one who was really tiptoeing around Ben was probably Hoss, but most of the time he didn’t have to fear. Mainly the children were just curious and good-hearted, but they had their moments of agitation, especially at that late hour or after very long days at their chores.

Elin returned to her chair, and started to play with the huge pine cones in the bowl in front of her. “What is Adam thinking to achieve with Laura Dayton?” she asked, more to herself than to anybody else.

Ben remained silent, and Hoss lowered his eyes, knowing that his Pa wouldn’t be at ease in talking about his son’s affairs with Elin. Family or not, she was still just an in-law. Ben looked at his crossed fists for some time, and raised his eyebrows when he finally came to a judgment. “He’s a grown man; he should be ready for marriage.”

“You should know better what I was asking, Ben.” Elin raised her chin, and her gray eyes glinted with a challenge. “He thinks of security and comfort… but you’ve seen them two together.”

Ben didn’t face her gaze. “I’ve seen them, all right. We’ve also… talked with Adam.” He blinked. “He should know.”

Elin waved her hand. “Look at this house he’s building…” she saw the surprised and even defensive look on Ben’s eyes, and she laughed accidentally. “Oh, I forgot, nobody was supposed to know.” She put her hand on Ben’s arm for a moment, and patted it with a very motherly gesture. “Tor rode up there once, and observed him building, and of course he told me.” She blushed a bit. “To be honest, I was so curious I went there after that myself, with Tor. But enough of that.”

Ben crossed his legs and leaned his elbow on the table, covering his mouth with his hand. He eyed the table and furrowed his brow, and let Elin continue. She crossed her fingers, too, and looked at her knuckles carefully. “Yes, this house. He is being so absent-minded and tired that he’s ignoring Laura so completely. I saw the disappointment in her eyes. Which one does Adam value the most, the big surprise, or keeping her?”

Ben’s frown travelled a bit on his forehead, but he remained silent. Hoss took Elin’s hand in his, and tried to see what she had seen. She let her thoughts stream out, although her hazy eyes had seen the defense the words had awakened in Ben. “If he has to build her into something he’d be ready to marry, just how long does he think the illusion will last, dear Ben? His absence and weariness are already distancing him from Laura so much, that it’s starting to look like an escape from her. If he can’t stay close during the engagement, how would he find the marriage? Twice as much work to stay away.”

Ben slammed the table and rose up. “That’s quite enough, Elin.”

She looked at him in the face. “I’m sorry, Ben, but I’ve got eyes.”

Ben walked away and leaned on one of the pillars that held the roof of the porch up. Elin sighed, and looked apologetically at Hoss. “Darling, I’m sorry I let my tongue wander again, and I’ve upset Faffa Ben. I’ll apologize, when he’s more receptive to me.”

She twirled her fingers through his, looking at the hairy back of his hands, and let her eyes follow his arm up to the wrist, the cuffs, the elbows, the shoulders, stopping for a moment at the collar that Hoss had unbuttoned as soon as the dinner was over, and reached his eyes eventually. “Though, I think he wouldn’t be so hurt if what I said were not true.” She sighed, and squeezed Hoss’ hand softly. “It will require some conflicts and some hurt feelings before the issue is solved out, and that’s what makes me sorry, my dear.”

Hoss looked at Elin’s eyebrows and eyelashes and wondered how they could resemble snowflakes so much, right above her sun-cast carrot freckles that shone gently in the evening light. Her eyes had a faint shade of purple in their dewy look, and the sky-blue gaze of his slowly faded to memories while hers examined what was to be.

How had it been him, Hoss, who had become so fortunate?

Elin smiled. “I’m glad you found me just as I am.”

* * *

Hoss and Joe were riding the pastures with Tor. Uncle Little Joe had taken a liking to the boy’s ability to change his shooting hand from left to right without even a blink, and given him a new holster to help him hang a revolver to whichever side it was that he needed to shoot from. Elin had been frowning at the skinny boy who had too-short sleeves and too-short cuffs, but who had been wrapped in two gun holsters, and murmured something about the beasts that hadn’t eaten her boy when he was armed with only the traps and the bow and the arrows. Secretly, though, she admired the boy’s sharp eyes and the good instinct he had with the weapons. She herself could probably hit a bull, but only from a very short distance, and it wasn’t a skill that would have brought the luxurious feel of pelts to her in the wintertime.

Hoss smiled at the memory of Elin’s shining eyes, when she used to stroke over the soft pelts and the fur, and how she would press her own smooth cheeks against the fluffy skins that the boys brought to her. His Elin. Silly gal. Maybe he should take her to some place. To San Francisco, perhaps?

The blue sky shone in the late summer, and the clouds were just faint shadows from the hopes of the people who were expecting the rains and the cooler breezes of the autumn already. Between the rocks and the evergreens, the three riders seemed to melt into the landscape in their dusty clothing and at their leisurely pace.

Joe pulled Cochise to a halt, and raised his hand. “Whoa, boy, hold it.” He examined the ground, and Hoss could imagine his words and silent murmuring, even though he was too far to be heard exactly. He reined his own horse to catch his brother, who was looking at the ground and raising his head to make sense of the tracks he had come across.

When Hoss came near, he could see also what had alerted Joe. A group of shoed horses had travelled over the terrain, and though out of sight for the time being, the riders could be somewhere close. Hoss raised his eyes to the trees and the hilltops around them, and picked up his rifle without a further thought. He whistled between his teeth and called Tor closer to them. Cochise danced under Joe a bit nervously, and Joe pulled himself together to ease the tension of his horse.

“I’ll go to the left side, you stick to the right”, Joe said, and spurred Cochise in the direction he had mentioned.

Hoss motioned Tor to stay behind him, and kicked Chubb to a light trot to circle to the other side of the path of the trespassers. “You stay behind, and no playing a hero, you hear me?” he warned the boy, and frowned deeply under his hat. The grim look of his blue eyes was sharp and lacked any mercy, and the stare was emphasized next to his brown skin that had gained color from the sun and the dust equally. His chin was protruding even more than usual, when he thought of the possible scenarios ahead of him, and the sound of Tor’s mare’s hooves behind him made him twice as angry to the men they were tracking.

Hoss and Tor could see Little Joe holding his hand up at the top of the ridge, where he reached the spot to have a view to the next valley, shaded by the leafy branches of the trees. Hoss searched for a safe way to climb up, too, to be safely hidden behind the vegetation and the landscape, but to be able to see what had stopped Joe.

Cattle thieves.

* * *

There was no lying there. The sound of gunshots were not more ominous, neither did the cliffs echoing in a way that would have been any different to the normal bangs of the shooting they came to witness every now and then.

Hoss could remember pushing Tor very hard to the ground, to make him stay ducked behind the rocks and bushes to take cover. The boy’s arm was hurt and a bruise was searching its way up his tender skin, anticipating a huge map of blue and yellow that wouldn’t appear on the surface before night or the next day.

None of them, not Tor or Hoss, were worried about the boy, though. Hoss had aimed his rifle along to shoot back, before a determined push had thrown him to the ground, too. “You’ve got family, stay down!” Joe had shouted.

And now he lay on Hoss’ arms, the dead weight of his body melting down heavily in front of him and the smell of blood making Chubb nervous. The bullet was somewhere inside; the throbs of blood had become so feeble that Hoss was afraid his brother had already lost too much. Tor had shot two horses of the men, and Hoss had wounded at least one man. But Hoss hadn’t been able to differentiate the men, who they were or where they rode off to. He had pressed his hand on the bleeding wound on his brother’s shoulder and assured him they would bring him home.

Hoss’ home was closer. He pressed the motionless body of his brother against his chest, to slide down as smoothly as he could, and nodded to Tor. “Boy, take a fresh pony and ride to town. Get Doc Martin as soon as you can, will ya?” The boy was pale as a ghost, and he hadn’t been able to speak all the way from home, but he nodded firmly to Hoss and sprang to the barn. Hoss closed his eyes for a moment, and hoped that the little gesture would be enough to pray strength for the boy. He felt so tired.

Hoss looked at the blood on Joe’s clothes, the blood on his skin, blood on his own clothes and all over his hands and his arms, but he didn’t see nothing more than the sweating cold face of his brother who was drifting between delirium and unconsciousness. His hat was resting back on the saddle horn of Cochise. He should remember to take it in the house.

Elin walked out and gasped, and flung her hands over her mouth. “Joe.”

She ran to Hoss, who was walking towards the house, carrying his brother in his arms. She took Joe’s head in her hands and peeked through the clothes to take a look at what happened, and her eyes glimmered in tears when she realized.

Tor came out of the barn and flew on the saddle, and Elin waved at him hastily, when he disappeared to the darkening horizon, his brown hair and brown jacket reflecting the shadows in a way that made his surface look like the feathers of a preying bird. “Ride safely, my son”, Elin whispered behind him, and turned her attention back to Hoss. “Bring him in.”

* * *

Hoss sat in a chair next to the bed where Joe lay.

Elin had cut twigs and flowers and ferns from the garden and put them in huge buckets around the bed, and told him that the smell of the fresh plants should bring the boy home. She had washed the Joe’s body with Hoss, before Doctor Martin had arrived, and said some prayers in her foreign tongue, trying to help the recovery in the best ways she could. The Doctor had dug the bullet out from the shoulder, where it had done some damage to the flesh and the bone.

Ben had fallen asleep in the armchair downstairs, and Elin hadn’t had the heart to wake him up to go and sleep properly. She knew he would not catch sleep again easily, knowing that his boy was hurt and unconscious and hoping that he would come round any time. Adam was sitting on the porch in the night, being shackled to his wheelchair to which he had been condemned for some time after an accident at the house he was building for himself and Laura. His thoughts were nailed to something distant, too, and his dark face would be matching the shadows of the night and the trees around while he, too, would be praying for his brother. Sheriff Coffee had been over to their place, but he hadn’t yet returned with word that the thieves would have been caught.

A fever had been rising in Joe, and Elin tried to wipe the sweat away from his face and his suffering body. When some cold shivers had taken over, she had covered his body with a quilt she had traded from some neighbors. ‘Maybe this will remind him of Lake Tahoe, of how it looks like if you see it from on top of a mountain and look down at all the pictures of trees and the rocks and the sky and the clouds’, she had said, and ran her fingers over the intricate needlework and the colors that had made her eyes glow and think of the scenery.

Sigrid had come to see her sleeping Uncle Little Joe, and she had sat next to her mother at the edge of the bed. Her eyes had not been sad, only puzzled, and she had tried to make Hoss calm. ‘Farbro Joe is not far away. He’s only lost the door from where to come back.’

The girl’s words had made the edges of Ben’s eyes all red. When Sigrid had seen the confined fear on her Grandfather’s face, she had gone and hugged Ben very hard from the middle of his body where she could reach him, and Ben had lifted his hands to hold her head against his chest. ‘Don’t worry, Farfar’, she had whispered against Ben’s leather vest. ‘He’ll find the way soon.’
Hoss’ head sunk slowly to his hands. He hoped as well, that Joe wouldn’t be lost for too long.

Elin’s hands curled around Hoss’ shoulders so protectively, that he felt the tension of his body to ease. It had been so much he had gone through the last days. Her fingers covered his worried posture as gently as they were made of smoke and mist, but they were firm and solid as a tide enveloping a cliff by the ocean. Hoss was so close to breaking that he just wondered how he had been able to deal with this before the soft embrace of her hands had come to hold him together.

Elin pressed his upper body closer to her own figure, and rubbed his arm very tenderly. “My Hoss”, she said in a voice the spoke to the world of the spirits around them as much as she spoke to him. She knew. “We aren’t given a burden so hard we couldn’t carry in our arms.”

Hoss had no choice but to believe.

Although, he was very relieved and glad that she was there to hold his tired shoulders, that were too weary to hold his arms up anymore.

“He will be back”, Elin whispered, and rubbed Hoss’ back once more, casting strength over his spine and his crumbled rib cage, and squeezed his shoulders before she stepped to Joe’s bed. She sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed the creases of the quilt, and stroked Joe’s curly hair and his cheek and wiped his sweating forehead. “He looks so beautiful even when he’s hurt, all ready to charm any girl who’d be ready to come by.”

Elin chuckled a bit wistfully, and kept her eyes sweeping gently on her brother-in-law’s face. Joe’s brown curls were long, and all disheveled after so long time in fever and hallucinations. Elin organized the brown locks around his face without any further thoughts or plans. “God wouldn’t have made all this beauty to go to waste”, she said, and looked at Hoss with her smoky eyes, before she fixed them at Joe again. “He comes from a family with big hearts, he’ll come round.”

Joe stirred, and Elin looked at Hoss, her eyes glimmering crystal clear. “Come, come, he’s waking up!” She waved her hand impatiently, and made Hoss leap closer to the bed. Joe’s eyes opened slowly, and it took some seconds for them to find their focus and recognize the sense of seeing yet again. He scanned the room slowly, and rested his eyes on Elin’s smiling face, and Hoss leaned closer over her shoulders to be sure it was his brother who had returned to the living.

“Hey, Eelyn”, Joe said faintly, and swallowed to wet his dry throat. “I was expecting a pretty gal to sit by my bed, but who let that oversized leprechaun in?”

Hoss pressed his lips into a thrilled smile and leaned his hand against the bed post, the relief erupting into a rumbling laugh and a gap-toothed smile. “Dad burn you, Little Joe, ain’t I glad to see you awake again. You got us all scared for a moment, you know?”

Elin smiled at Hoss and at Joe, and rose up. “I’ll fetch your Pa, and your brother; they’ve been so worried.” She pinched the smooth cheek of Joe. “Welcome back to us, bror min“, she said. “My brother.”

* * *

Adam was walking again.

Cousin Will was also walking, but he had walked away with Laura Dayton and taken sweet Peggy with him, and Adam needed to walk for different reasons, now. Joe couldn’t be tied to bed for a long time, and his scratches seemed to heal and disappear so quickly that he seemed to have more lives than a cat.

He had seen Elin rise up many times from her chair, feeling a bit feeble, trying to see if he’d notice. He would also look at Elin when she would be carrying water in huge buckets to the house, or to the large pots at wash house, and resting in the middle and wiping her forehead. She would always look at him and try to see if he noticed, but of course he did. Hoss knew, and she knew he knew, although she pretended he wouldn’t have known.

He knew how to do his math.

But Hoss hadn’t said anything; he hadn’t done anything that would have let her know that he knew, too. What was to be was to be, but they were both afraid to touch the subject they were both hoping for, as much as both of them were afraid of it. Hoss hadn’t wanted to tear old wounds open, again, until he knew that she’d be strong enough, she’d be ready.

Or that he would be ready.

The truth was, he didn’t know how to react, so as to not shake her fragile balance, not to disturb the nature, or not to put out the fire in her. He just wanted to run after Elin, and assure her that running away wouldn’t run away from the issue, wouldn’t run away from the challenge they should face. But he understood why she was apprehensive, and how she didn’t have the way to tell him, because it had been so much of hope and sorrow for them already in the short beginning of their marriage.

Until one morning when she was cooking porridge for breakfast, and all of a sudden she’d bend over, and Hoss would hold her hair when she’d empty her stomach into a bucket.

Hoss still remembered how it tasted to kiss her neck after she had washed her face with cold water. Sparkles shined in the little droplets of water on her skin that was still covered with the tastes of cinnamon and saffron despite her own feeling of nausea. He’d never forget the way her giggles rumbled over her throat under his lips while she would try to struggle out from his hold, but in the end she had surrendered to him.

“Hoss, I’m happy. I’m scared to death, but still happy as a little bird.”

Hoss kissed the tears away from her eyes and held her close against his own body. His breathing was heavy and rough, but his vigor was trying to build strength for her as well, even though her complexion was reluctant to give in to the happiness and her hands were trying to push him away. “It’s still very early, my Erik”, she’d whisper, and throw up again while he’d hold her braid.

* * *

Hoss sneered when he heard the first muffled thud of a raindrop on the rim of his hat, and when his creased nose turned upward and his brow furrowed to protest the upcoming weather, he pulled his coat tighter around him. The buckboard traveled over an uneven trail, wobbled under his weight and made him put one foot against the wood in front of his leg. When he tilted his head up again, another raindrop landed right next to the ridge of his nose, causing an annoyed murmuring voice escape from his throat.

“Dad burn it…”

Elin pressed closer against him, while her gray gaze swept over to the skies and her long arm stretched out to receive the droplets. As if she wished them welcome; her shawl fell a little from her shoulders, and the fold of her neck made her chignon untidy. She had a hat somewhere, but that somewhere could have been as well under all of the wagonload behind them. Her voice was clear and bubbling, for all the gathering gray clouds and thickening rain.

“It’s raining, Hoss.”

“Yeah, hon’, it’s as raining as a fair rain can rain right now.”

Hoss checked the reins and thought of the road ahead of them, thinking of seeking shelter at a grove, as he didn’t remember any line shacks or other suitable roofs to protect them from the weather.

A hand slipped under his coat sneakily, catching a supporting hold of his side while his wife’s body enforced itself under his other arm, causing the horse to toss his head when he felt a pull at the other rein.

“I thought I needed to find cover”, Elin spoke and squeezed against him to act as if the front of his coat was enough to cover her from the rain. Hoss released the reins and the horse slowed down, pushing his ears back and protesting for the weather, as well.

“Ailynn…?”

Swallowing caused a sound loud enough to be heard even in the increasing rain.

Elin wiggled on his thighs to sit tightly on his legs and got a hold of his shoulder under the coat, while the other hand clung to his side, to his belt. The chin passed under his eyes so close he saw a raindrop that had landed above her lips, traveling down the pale skin and searching the escape over the ridge of the teasing mouth. The moment was short, though, the movement of hers took another direction and he heard the lips murmuring under his ear, very close to the stubble that tickled against the brushing gestures of her face.

“Pull over.”

Dad… Burn it.

“R…”

Gasp.

She had opened her gray eyes, the familiar twinkle of the morning dew had gone away and the melting iron mixed to thick smoke and coal gray caught him by surprise.

“Right here, Ailynn?”

She pulled his hat on her own head, but it was all in vain, the rain brushed the hems of her dress and whipped both of their bodies from their shoulders and below, and the way she pushed the hat back on the crown of her head and turned aside made both their faces expose to the rain nakedly.

“When we go home, there are kids waiting”, she said and brought her head a bit lower, staying under his chin and whispering to the collar of his shirt.

That collar was tight. Even if the highest few buttons were open, that dad burn collar knew how to be tight. Raindrops poured over his hair and tickled uncomfortably when they ran from the tips of the hair inside the collar, but the discomfort was nearly comfortable with the way she nudged the shirt from the front.

It did – or didn’t help that her lips left their marks over the Adam’s apple and the throat both sides of it, one set of fingers playing somewhere where the highest still closed button was waiting. In the first weeks when they were married, her lips had found a spot from his collar bone that made his whole body respond. Still today, no matter how long he would have been away or how tired he was when returning from the trail, she unmistakably found that exact same spot.

The imagination of his wife seemed to have no boundaries, even if Hoss himself could sometimes surprise her while inspiration ran strong.

“It’s all… wet, Ailynn.”

The buckboard had stopped from moving, although Hoss still had the reins in his other hand, mocking him with the problem of how to get them safely hitched to the hook. The other hand held tight around Elin’s body to stop her from falling; he had to shift his legs a bit to make room for her and help her balance slightly better. Her waistline softness was hardening for touch, it was preparing to expand. She hardly ever wore a corset, but it was good, he could tell if she was excited, angry, or in lack of something by the movement of her diaphragm in the pace of her breathing.

“It’s dry under the buckboard.”

Elin giggled, deep from her throat, her voice chiming like a voice of a child, while her hands tucked his vest in a way that was quite adult.

Hoss thought of her, how she had frowned under his weight the first time together, and how her soft moan had made him worried. ‘Do I hurt you?’ he had asked. ‘No, you do good’, she answered, and later showed how pain could be pleasure, too, how teeth could cause more than lips or fingers.

Once he had snapped at her, at her tantrums and sassing Swedish that battered him for no reason, perhaps she’d burned all her buns or broken the eggs in the basket. She was lashing out at him, and started to poke his chest with her hard-boned finger in a manner that finally drove him to the edge. For once, he had gotten angry and tucked her under his arm, and smacked a few times to make her quiet. Not harder than if she had been a child, but enough to tell her to mind her manners. When he released her and stared at her spitting angry face, she threw a pillow at him, she threw a pair of socks at him, she tried to throw a petticoat which didn’t fly and made her stomp her feet, until her bad mood made her cry hot tears and she ran away.

She disappeared for the whole day, avoiding him – until in the night, when he had been in the barn to see to the horses, a pair of hands had crawled to circle his chest from behind while her bosom’s soft figure pressed against his back, and soft lips had murmured to the scruff of his neck to ask for more.
The reins fell on his feet, the other hand rose up to stroke his wife’s soft brown hair that was waiting behind the ear to fall loose from the bun in the neck. She wasn’t made to be understood, but to be held in his hands, to be loved in spite.

“Not anymore, I’m afraid.”

He bent his head down to reach her face, to invite it upright again, to let him join the game, too. The hat fell off from her head, and landed next to his feet by the seat. The horse shifted, making the carriage behind him shift, and the bump shook the couple but didn’t separate them an inch.

“We could turn back to the trees”, he said into her mouth, to her nostrils that were too close. He let the grip of his hands loosen so that she answered the movement by leaning her back against his arms.

His own eyes examined her face, the mist in his own dreamy look making the corners of his wife’s eyes smile while he looked at her from the top of her head to the chin, and back, trying to memorize every quarter of a quarter of an inch under the raindrops that striped her face but glimmered like crystals. All his, she had said in the night after they were married; she had kept her promise.

Her leg snaked her body once more while it climbed over his thighs, the rain-soaked hems following with little elegance and sweeping over his knees and shins with their heavy shadow. His hand groped for a moment and found her leg, covered with the stocking and fitted into the buttoned shoe, and traveling higher he fixed her better on his thighs.

“Not anymore, I’m afraid.”

Yes, for having her, there was a price to pay.
He was hers, from head to toe, but at this end of the rope, that was a small price in the bargain.

The rain twirled around them and sheltered them from the rest of the world with its thick and oozing fall like a curtain; nobody would be out in this shower. They were all alone, the rain was washing all the trails away.

* * *

Hoss felt it often under his palms. It was still not so much to be seen, but the way his hands came from behind her back or turned around her waist had become substantially different. Elin’s body was getting softer and padded in other places, too, she had a new layer under her previously pointy chin and her fingers and her ankles were sometimes stiff and hard to bend. At those times, she’d hold her hand over her lower back and glower at Hoss, with a dooming frown nestling around her blonde eyebrows. Elin was growing into a different person, even though she was still the same Elin who had dipped her toes in the cold lake early last summer and screamed at its coldness.

She used to sit down and spin yarn with her spinning wheel, and often she was captured in so many shades of yellows, greens, browns and whites that it made Hoss’ own head spin; he hadn’t known the colours of the mountains and hills would be so various, and yet come from those four simple families. He’d pull on his boots and put on his hat and ride out with the image of his calm wife sitting behind the wheel and the shades of the Sierras.

Even though, sometimes, when Elin’s lips were not only smiling but also humming softly to herself and her own imaginary world, it would be a bit harder to leave. He liked the feel of the way the bump under her chest was forming, how it felt to be rubbing it gently, expecting the kicks that might be still further away. Elin would ruffle his hair that was escaping in untamed thin curls to all directions, and she threatened to spin it to the yarn just because it was so frizzy.
Hoss grinned again at the image. “It seems I’ve married a spider”.

Elin continued to step on the foot-piece and laughed. “Spindel.” She continued to spin the wheel and cast wool to make yarn. “En fyllig spindel.”

“What does that mean?”

“Round and plump spider. Spindel.”

“You’re plumb spinning with your tongue, did you know?”
Elin pressed her lips in an overtly confident smile. “I should be. Somebody has to, to be a match for you.”

For a moment Hoss thought, that she had showed her tongue at him, but the impression went over so quickly that he couldn’t be sure.

* * *

Hoss woke up early, and stretched his hands to overcome the stiffness caused by his uncomfortable bed. He opened his eyes and kicked his legs down from the settee, which was too short and too narrow for him to sleep comfortably. The quilt fell off, but he didn’t bother to pick it up, as he needed to get up, anyway.

He yawned very hard, almost making his jaws crack, and scratched his belly from both sides with his hands.

He looked up to see if Elin would be staring at him with blame and judgment in her eyes, but she was still in their room. Asleep or not, he didn’t know, but it seemed she was not the one to come down and offer to make peace.

Hoss stood up and stretched his back and heard a snapping sound from his spine. He had seen challenge in Elin’s eyes, she had been in a foul mood and picked a fight from the smallest things, but he had been all tuckered out after three long days out with his Pa to figure out about the timber, the contracts and ways to move the trees over the woods. Instead of sticking to the battle, he had just picked up the pillow and the blanket she had tossed outside their room and stalked downstairs. He had felt the flames coming from her breath and her eyes at the back of his neck, but he had better things to do than to humor her with an argument.

Such as sleeping.

He creased his eyebrows and the look in his blue eyes got a bit preoccupied when he thought about the possibly awaiting tongue-lashing. In a rasping manner, she would attack him with her words, the majority of the time in a language he could understand. Even though, often the things she went head to head with him on were beyond his understanding. Hoss yawned and hoped for some of the kids to be around when Elin woke up.

When he came back from the outhouse, Rebecka was up with her mother. She didn’t care about the stormy looks of her mother, but she was innocently surprised by the sheets and the pillows on the settee. “Who slept here?” she asked, her eyes still covered with faint remainders of her sleep.

“As a matter of fact, Rebbeca, I did”, Hoss said, and held his expressions inside.

Rebecka stared at him, and frowned. “Why did Mamma put you to bed downstairs?”

Hoss twisted his mouth and formed an alliance of ignorance with his daughter.

“Because he smells bad”, Elin grumbled, and made Hoss bite his tongue.

He lifted his arm up to his nose, and sniffed audibly. “Yes, I think I do”, he said, and looked Rebecka in the eyes. The girl came by him and smelled his shirt, too, and shook her head.

“You don’t smell worse than usually”, she said, and made Hoss’ eyebrows rise so high that for a moment he was afraid they’d fly off his forehead. Rebecka was odd enough to make his chest tickle out of laughter, but Elin’s hissing snarls were almost as, if not more, entertaining. She was bouncing around in her night gown and tossing things here and there with sharp motions.

“Go and wake up your brother and sister, Hoss is going for a business trip and we should say good bye.” Elin patted the reluctant little girl on her back with a little bit too much force, and turned her back at Hoss.

Hoss sighed, and tried to walk closer to her, but she kept turning her back toward him no matter which direction he took. Even her back was glowering at him, and her braid had been pulled over her shoulder to hang at her own side. Finally she glanced at him over her shoulder. “Did you catch some sleep?” she asked curtly.

“Yes’m, I did.” Hoss guessed that she hadn’t had so much of it, but she wouldn’t say.

“Uh-huh.” She crossed her arms over her breasts and glanced over the other shoulder. “Was it lonely?”

“No, ma’am, not overbearingly.” Hoss looked down at the wood of the floor, and knew she’d never admit she had been so.

“Are you sorry?” she asked, and turned to face him with an accusing look on her face, her shoulders covered with a shawl that she had spread over her shoulders like armour.

Hoss shook his head. “No.” He knew she’d not say she were sorry, or that she had acted hastily, or that she would feel bad about throwing him out. Even less would she say that she didn’t want him to leave for days after waking up from the uncomfortable settee in the great room, but if Hoss were lucky he would be able to cross the wall between them and touch her for a goodbye.

She’d come to her senses, pick up his pillow quietly and put it back on their bed, and forget about her promise never to talk to him again sooner than a morning would turn to noon.

Even if it was impossible for her to admit she had been wrong.

”Bring the children something nice, will you?” she asked, and bent her head down.

”I will.” He would bring something nice for her, too. He didn’t know what, but maybe his Pa could be of use. After all, his Pa had been married not only once but three times.

“Say my greetings to your father, and your brothers, will you?” she said, and turned her eyes to her idle hands.

“Of course I will.” He walked past her only so close that his arm brushed her gown very gently, and she stirred a bit as she didn’t know if to wait for more or to resent from even that little bit. Hoss looked at her profile and combed his own ruffled hair with his fingers. “I’ll tell somebody to come by and see you’re all right, while I’m away.”

* * *

Rebecka was holding her hands over her mother’s belly. “Why is it so big, Mamma?” She looked at Hoss, and kept her ear close to the growing waistline. “How did it get there?”

Hoss could have told many stories and Elin a little bit more, but they both just stifled their smiles while Tor and Sigrid were looking as though they’d like to be really far away. Hoss knew the kids felt awkward and intruding every time he liked to cuddle their Ma, but he couldn’t resist to tease them with a secret kiss every now and then, just to make Elin laugh at the blushing crimson complexions of the kids.

Rebecka stroked her mothers round and firm body, and Elin lifted her up on her arms, even though it was getting hard because of her daughter’s age and her own size. But she was still able to lift Rebecka on her arm and rest her upon her hip, and she tried to collect the children in her arms as often as she remembered, even though in Tor it aroused a sheer will for kicking and snaking away to get out.

Elin pressed a little kiss on the cheek of Rebecka, and touched her silver blonde hair. “Your little baby sister or brother is getting ready to come out, sooner every day.” She grinned and squeezed the tip of her daughter’s nose, and looked at her other kids, smiling so widely that her freckles shone out right in gold and saffron shades. “Maybe this time you can concentrate on being a brother and sisters, not like last time when Tor had to be a Papa and Sigrid a second Mama.” The wrinkles around her eyes told about the life she had lived, but they also sent warm feelings to the flushing children, and she put Rebecka down and walked to the older siblings.

“I know you still remember how hard it was when your Pappa had gone and Rebecka spent every night and day crying, my dears.” Perhaps the children had no idea, but she herself had been there very much. Elin touched Tor and Sigrid faintly on their heads, and ignored the ashamed looks of them that came from somewhere that was not connected to anything in particular. “But maybe this time you don’t have to be so tough and so strong, and you can play with your baby sister or brother just as it’ll be.” The children struggled out from her gentle cuddles, a trifle ashamed and a trifle embarrassed, and their expressions made Hoss grin inwardly. Sigrid thanked them for the breakfast and sneaked out from the table.

Rebecka tucked the sleeve of Hoss, and looked at him with her still blue eyes. “Pa, can I go and fetch Svartan to come inside with me?”

If she would have asked to bring in all the porcupines and skunks of the county to protect her room and to crowd the house, he would have said yes. He would have said yes to any wish to haul every living angry beaver and the fighting hawk to the house, because he had only heard one word.

“Pa.”

He had to think over it again, and he forgot what Rebecka asked. It felt quite delicious in his mind.

Elin was a lot firmer. “No, you can’t. Absolutely not. Faffa and Uncles are coming over and everything should be tidy. Tidy, not muddy and messy as you’d make it with Svartan.”

Tor rolled his eyes. “Do you mean we’ll have to…”

“Yes. You put on your suit and the bow tie.”

“But Mamma…”
“Men Mamma, men mamma… you will also eat with all the forks we put on the table, to learn!”

Tor rolled his eyes again. “What for? For me to clean up afterwards?”

“Maybe.” Elin cocked an eyebrow at her son. ”I will not be called a gold digger by anyone, just because you’re too stubborn to learn the good manners.” Tor made a grimace, and the gesture made Elin raise her forefinger warningly. “Yes, son, you’ll do as I say, and watch and learn. I’ve borrowed Hop Sing for tonight, and you aren’t gonna spoil my fun. Now, go out, and let me scrub the kitchen clean before he comes!”

Tor stuck his fists to his pockets and stalked to the door, as if his feet were a bit too over-grown for his slender body. His sulking reminded Hoss of his own little brother, even though Joe had been made out of a completely different set of temper and agitation.

Elin collected the plates into a pile and snapped at Tor, while he was putting on his coat and opening the door. “Remember, Hop Sing wants his fire wood and the eggs, remind Sigrid!”

Hoss helped Rebecka with her coat, too, and held the door open for her before he returned his attention to their mother again. “Elin… I wish you wouldn’t say that.”

“Say what?” Elin rested her hand over her protruding middle and looked at him.

“Don’t call yourself a gold digger. You’re no such thing.” Hoss sat down, and leaned his elbows on the table. He pursed his lips behind his crossed fingers and looked at Elin questioningly.

A slow smile climbed on Elin’s pregnancy-softened face, and she came to sit on his lap. Her big belly was adding a lot of weight to her already plumped up figure, and it was already starting to make it harder for him to reach his hands around her body. But he managed to hold her very firmly and still, although he couldn’t tell for sure how long it would last.

“Maybe that’s just exactly what I am, a golddigger”, she said, and looked at his eyes and his nose and his whole wide face with playful intensity. “Maybe I’m sitting on top of the biggest mountain of gold ever found in the whole state.”

A few chuckles and guffaws escaped from the depths of Hoss’ diaphragm, and they built up into a short laughter when he thought about the image she had built in his mind. “You are doing it a bit on the heavy side, too, to make sure, ain’t you?”

She refused his hands that tried to touch the fluffier neckline and her rounder cheeks, and shifted a bit to sit deeper down on his legs. “It’s not only me you should blame of it”, she teased, and grinned at him very arrogantly. Her blunt stare made Hoss laugh and turn his head down for a moment.

“I don’t know what for you’ve been given that tongue of yours, but you sure can surprise me every day”, he said, smiling at her confident expression. He put his hand over her body and looked down. “How’s our little prospect coming along?”
“Let me see.” Elin looked down, and returned her glimmering eyes at Hoss’ blue ones. Her freckles had woken up again, and the cardamom scent of her smile was making her bite her lower lip very jestingly. “It might need a bit more mining to find it out.”

“Don’t go diggin’ too deep, there’s a lot to do before the evening.”

“My claim and my bid, I’ll do as I please.”

Elin’s excavations were interrupted by a noise coming from the yard. The cries sounded like three pairs of fists in action against each other, with some scratches on the skin and some sore scalps from pulling of the hair. She rolled her eyes, and pushed her lower lip forward, and looked at Hoss beggingly. “Your turn?”

“My turn.”

Hoss stood up and let Elin slide down on the floor, before he walked to the door to pick his hat and his coat, He took a deep breath and entered the yard to see what the fight was about. Dang those children, always at each others neck.
And he couldn’t wait to have even more.

* * *

It was a bright and clear day, and Hoss was riding home early. He was holding a young crow under his vest, trying to keep its beak and its sharp nails against the leather rather than his own skin. It was a bit odd at this time of the year for such a critter to still be so small, but what happened, happened, and Hoss had found the remainders of the mother crow a bit further ahead. The wing of this youngling had been hurt, too, and it was limping on its feet a bit helpless, half frustrated, when Hoss found it.

He took it out gently when he pulled Chubb to a halt at the front yard, and whistled to Tor whom he saw feeding the chickens behind the house. “Hey, Thor, come over here!” he said quite out loud, and peered to see if the girls were somewhere in the yard. Svartan was lying under the stairs and only the tip of his yellow tail was visible, the rest of him in the shadows that made him a picture of his name, “the Black One”. Hoss winked at the boy, and held the crow’s feet in his hand, stroking soothingly over the smooth feathers of the bird and trying to hold it still without too many twitches and jolts. “Look, what I found.”

Tor came closer, and smiled happily with all his white teeth shining in the sun, before he remembered what he had been taught and hunched over the little creature. He glanced over his shoulder at the kitchen window and the front door. “Don’t let Mamma see, she ain’t gonna like it.” He pointed to the barn and whispered back to Hoss. “Let’s take him to the barn.”

“I think it is a little her, but the barn it is, if you say so”, Hoss whispered back, and couldn’t help but to grin at the sneaking back of the hunching boy. Thor would need a haircut, again, and he would have to remind Elin about that.

Sigrid and Rebecka were found in the barn, where they were raking the floor and greasing the saddles. Although, Rebecka was more or less brushing her pony and whispering into his ears, forgetting to groom the floor as much as she remembered new things to say to the critter. Hoss felt a bit worried about the pony, but then again, she could ride. Little Joe had already been finding strays at that age, or at least close enough. It was hard to let the kids grow, though.

“Can I?” Tor asked Hoss, and took the crow in his hands very carefully. Hoss looked at his gentle but determinate hands and felt very proud. Tor smiled radiantly and his freckles lit up, under his gray eyes that were often shaded by his too-long hair. “Look, girls, look what Hoss found in the forest!”

Sigrid left her rag and the wax immediately, and came closer. Rebecka held the head of her pony, but eyed very curiously what Tor had brought to the stables. Hoss chuckled. “I saw her wounded, not able to fly, and I thought you might like to see if she’ll be fixed and healed again”, he said, and creased his nose in a grin. “I used to bring them home a lot when I was a kid, but I done nearly forgot how to, before I saw this li’l one.”

Tor stroked over the head of the bird very softly, and the bird sat still, her eyes blinking but her chest moving at the normal rate of breathing, and she could even have been called calm. Sigrid looked at the crow very curiously, and held her hand out slowly, being able to stroke the bird after a bit of hesitation and care. “What’s wrong with her?” she inquired, and looked at Hoss with her wide eyes.

Hoss leaned against the rail of the stall, and looked down. “She ain’t quite fit to fly; I reckon she’s hurt her wing in a fight or somethin’.” He left out what had happened to the crow’s mother, though, and pushed his hat further back on his head, when he heard Elin step in. “Ailynn”, he greeted, and looked at his wife a bit sheepishly. Elin held her hand against her back and bit her lower lip.

“I felt you come”, she said, and looked at the bird. “I thought you’d be teaching my little ones out of it, but there seems to be only little hope”, she said, and bit her upper lit for a change. Hoss took his hat off, knowing that his hair would be pointing in two different directions at the shape of the wave the hat left on his hair, and knowing also that the way it curled so made Elin very unable to stop him from any childishness.

“She was so poor and helpless”, he said, and raised his blue eyes to meet hers, with a glimmer and brightness in them begging for her to release her objections.

The bird would settle for human ways for a while, and when it would be her time to fly back to the forest to find her kin, they would find a way. Or Elin would find a way. Elin had found a way to fix the problem of six kittens to be a problem of only one, when Hoss hadn’t had the heart to, and she had done it so discreetly that none of the kids didn’t even know what had happened.

Elin rolled her eyes and set her hand on her belly. “Finally, instead of having three, I have four children”, she said, and the way her ‘children’ sounded more like ‘shildren’ made Hoss’ ears tickle.

“Be good, Elin, she’ll settle down. There’ve been even legends of how crows stayed and learnt to behave in human ways. Done learnt even to talk”, he said, and laughed deep from his throat when she pointed a very sideways look at him through her narrowed eyes, with one of the transparent eyebrows cocked dubiously at him. Hoss grinned, and enjoyed the way Elin’s face softened when she turned her attention to their children, who were petting the bird very carefully and trying to see if she’d stay put if Tor let go of her feet.

* * *

Elin sat beside him on the bed and leaned against his back, holding both her hands on his thick skin and making everything under the slightly hairy surface move in a blubbing and squiggling way. Hoss could hear crunches and gurgles of each muscle while a wave of half pain and half just pure shock would anticipate a shivering squishy move of the split of his muscle plates. It would make him grit his teeth and smother a howl into the pillow, and she would just continue with another push against his back with a force that would flatten the air out of his lungs.

“Breathe.” Elin’s order was calm, and eventually Hoss took a deep breath, even though he was afraid to release the protective clench of his muscles intentionally. However, the authority of her voice was even worse than the command of his natural instinct to escape. She continued to separate his flesh from his bones with her hot, strong fingers, and each pinch with the thumb brought up yet another sore layer from the depths that Hoss hadn’t known even to exist, before she had laid her hands on him the first time and done the “rub” as she called it.

Hoss had been shot and battered down quite a few times, but the suffering had been almost nothing compared to her persistent pair of hands that left him ailing and sore for the whole night. But he let her, as she knew what she was doing, and the next morning Hoss would wake up fresh as a young colt in the prime of his life.

If only it wouldn’t have made him hurt so dad burn bad at the time. He held his breath, again, and tried to let go and just inhale and exhale like he used to.
“You’re stiff as a brick”, Elin said, and pushed her finger through something that arose an unwarned, muffled grunt from Hoss and almost brought tears to his eyes.

“Shouldn’t you be resting, instead?” Hoss blew the air out of his lungs and fearfully inhaled a little. She had still plenty of weeks to await, but he was prepared to carry her everywhere if necessary, just to make sure the time wouldn’t come too soon.

“You shouldn’t complain, you never know when these hands will be free again”, she said, and chuckled quietly. “I have to make sure I’ve not held them back from you before you miss their touch again.”

New warmth was starting at Hoss’ back, when he started to notice how blood found new routes to rush to his muscles and over his skin, and their tight clutch over his bones was starting to give in to the unyielding long fingers around his body. She worked her way up to the shoulders and back below to the larger muscles. Hoss had seen her help a limping horse recover with the same persistent touch of her stout fingers, but he didn’t want to think about it too much, because he still wanted to hope that she used less force on human beings than she would use on a mule.

He muffled another shout in the pillow and heard her very faintly to order him to breathe.

* * *

Hoss stroked the back of the swollen mare, and pressed his ear against her stretched side. His other hand was moving firmly over the mare’s stomach, and what he felt made him squeeze his lips in a satisfied smile. Everything was fine under the horse’s warm skin, and he could stand up and pat the horse, complimenting her.

Rebecka leaned over the rail and stretched her hand out to scratch the head of the mare under the fringe. She was curious, and Sigrid’s eyes were glimmering out of curiosity, too, when she sat on a turned bucket. “Does it hurt the mama horse to be so big?” Sigrid asked, and hugged her knees, guiding her eyes up from under her straight eyebrows to inquire at Hoss.

Hoss cleared his throat, and leaned his hands on his belt. “I reckon it looks quite hard, but it can’t be so that the mama would be made so big she couldn’t carry it”, he said, and tousled the brown curls of the older daughter.

Rebecka stroked the nose of the mare and looked at Hoss, with all new curiosity in her faint blue eyes, too. “Does it hurt Granen a lot when the foal comes?” she asked, and touched the soft mouth of the horse, making the mare grasp for her fingers with the soft nibbling lips.

Hoss stroked the neck of the horse and felt glad over the condition of the mane and the hair and the smooth warm skin. “It might, I don’t right know. The mare is strong, but the fowls have an awful lot of legs when they are born.” He showed with his hand the height of the mares legs, and held his hand up to demonstrate. “The legs of the baby horses are as long as they’ll ever get when they grow up, so they can run from the first moment of their life.”

Rebecka looked at him, doubtingly. “You’re joking.”

“No, li’l gal, I ain’t. It’s mighty important for horses to be able to run, from the first day of their life.” He brushed his fingers through the thick mane of the mare, Granen, and saw her blink and flare her nostrils.

“Have you seen many horses out to the world?” Sigrid asked, and sat a bit straighter, to be able to lean her elbow to her knee and her fist to her cheek.

A little grin escaped on Hoss’ face, and for a moment he felt almost as curious and little as the girls. “Yes, Secret, I have, but they’ve been so many I can’t really count anymore.” He snorted, and bowed his head a bit. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been also seeing little human babies to this world. All three of them, fine babies, if I can count all correctly.”

Rebecka’s jaw dropped down. “Your babies?”

Hoss laughed, and stretched his hands to lift Rebecka up from the rail and set her resting against his hip, while he walked out of the stall. “No, not my babies, where would you think I done put them to hide?” He laughed again, so that it made Rebecka purse her lips into a little sullen expression, because she had thought her question was a perfectly good one.

Sigrid stood up and took the bucket up, clasping it under her arm. “Are human babies different from them animal babies?” she asked.

“Very much so, sweet pie, I can tell.” Hoss let Rebecka slide down from his arms and took the bucket from the girl, and motioned her to go pump the water from the well. “They are very tiny and soft and it’ll take a good many months before they’ll run.”

“Yeah, I think it is so”, Sigrid said, and took the handle. “You can’t tie a rope around their legs and pull them out, either, if they get stuck.”

“No, I reckon they’d just as much as break from such a treatment.” He chuckled. “It’d make me a real bad Pa to start with, if I’d ever try.”

“Mamma would tie you like a calf, if you would.” Sigrid’s eyes glimmered a bit in a way that implied to Hoss she’d be starting to match her mother any time soon. He grinned, though.

“Yeah, and she’d finish the job by smacking me at the back of my head with that skillet of hers. Nah, you’ll have to carry them babies real carefully and be very cautious not to break their li’l bones or hurt their head.” Hoss pulled the bucket away from the running water and held it to Sigrid. “Here. Go on and take it inside, Graw-nen will appreciate it.”

Sigrid stood for a moment, shifting her weight from one foot to another. Hoss looked at her for a moment, the way her thin leather shoes were spreading dust over the toes of first the left and then the right one, and finally he put his hand around the shoulders of the girl and bent a little to look her into the eyes. “What’s the matter, sweet pie?”

Sigrid bit her lip and hesitated for yet a while. Her gray eyes were giving way to the black centers of her eyes to expand, and finally she spoke. “IsMamma gonna be all right?”

Hoss swallowed and a smile crept over his square face, when he squeezed the back of his daughter’s neck, trying to assure her that everything was going to be fine. “Sure, Secret, she’s gonna be just fine. If there ever was a woman who could do it, it’s your Mama.”

Sigrid’s eyes were relieved a bit, and a little smile lit up on her lips, and she turned around to take the water in for the horse.

Hoss stood up, and felt the little hand of Rebecka to take hold of his much bigger and fairly more calloused hand. “Pa, which one would you like more, a boy or a girl?”

“I don’t know. I plan to like it whether it’s a boy or a gal or a half of each, you hear that?” he said, and pressed the little fingers in his hand. Rebecka frowned at him dubiously.

“You can’t be half of both”, she said, with a slight apprehension in her voice.

“Who says so?” Hoss asked, and grinned inside, when the frown settled more permanently on Rebeckas brow. “Come on; let’s go inside to ask if our little Mama needs something.” ‘

Rebecka stood still, dragging Hoss behind, too. Hoss grinned, slightly, before he folded his face back to normal and bent down to speak to the girl. “You know, I’m gonna do something nasty if you ain’t gonna calm down.”

“Like what?” Rebecka eyed him with stern seriousness, with all the surface of the cornflower blue eyes of hers under the slightly messed braided hair.

Hoss puckered his lips to emphasize every single word. “I’m gonna tell your Ma.”

* * *

Elin held her hand over Hoss’ big one, when she showed him where she felt the kicks of the feet and the thuds of the fists.

The head was over here, and the curve of the backside was somewhere under here. Hoss felt it too, and it made him all silent, to feel so much of life that was hidden but that lay right under his eyes and his rough palms. Elin touched his head with her hand, when he put his own cheek and his ear against the wall of her skin that separated him from the unborn baby, and made Elin smile.

“I’d do the same if I could”, she said, and blinked her eyes lazily.

* * *

The round and swaying figure of Elin was so clumsy that she reminded Hoss of a slow ladybug. She nagged at him for saying that, but then she wore red, smiling to herself in her private world and holding her belly up with her arms.

Elin complained about how her swollen curves were, according to her own words, “leaking”. “I wish the baby would come out soon, rather than making me all so full”, she laughed, and wrapped her upper body in flannel and soft wool to protect her clothes and to be able to move around with her small chores more comfortably. Hoss was a bit perturbed about the latest development, because it felt like something strange and foreign had invaded his territory.

When he accidentally let Elin hear that, she started to laugh very hard. “Your territory?” she exclaimed in disbelief and almost split her face in two. Tears sprinkled into her eyes and she had to cross her legs below her bulbous midriff, and uncontrolled giggles shook her body for a long time. So long, that in the end Hoss felt a bit insulted.

Her laughing continued the whole day, she would forget for a moment and remember it again, and start laughing, her thighs crossed and her hand leaning on something solid, snorting at some most exhilarating point and holding her stretched, tender bosom with her arm. By the evening, her behavior had made Hoss quite hurt; in the night the light touch of her fingertips on his back made him so irritated, that her muffled chuckles made him collect his pillow and his blanket, and move down to sleep on the coach once more.

Elin was still chuckling low from her throat in the morning. She took Hoss by the arm and said that they should open one of the empty rooms and furnish it with a bed. “Perhaps Faffa Ben will let us borrow a big one from the Ponderosa”, she said, and guffawed softly.

* * *

Hoss and Elin had discussed what would happen when her time came. She had ordered him to scrub the bath house all clean, and he had been so stunned he didn’t even know how to start the protesting.

‘Of course’, she had said, her eyes wide from surprise and disbelief in them just ogled the fact that anybody would have an objection.

‘Of course not’, he had said, and just looked at her, his eyes equally wide and his mouth gaping, for that matter. For him, it was unbelievable and never heard, that somebody would even think of such a place for birth.

‘It is the place we wash the bodies; of those who come to life and of them who already passed away.’ With that, and a turn on her deep-dug heels, she had had her way, like she normally did, five times of eight.

Well, at least it would be easy to keep hot water at hand.

Elin had turned her back on him when he had slowly let go of his resistance and thought of the possible advances, and laughed at him with her white teeth shining. ‘You don’t believe, Erik, soon I will be able to lie on my back again.’

The bliss on her face had made him laugh, but it made him also worried about how exactly was she going to get the baby out.

‘Oh, shush’, she had said, and waved her arm in the air in a large arch. ‘On my four feet. Or I’ll go like a frog.’ Hoss still remembered her childish frown that judged her own incapability.

‘You squat?’

‘Yes. I’ll squat.’ She had eyed him with her teeth grasping her lower lip, and continued to examine the possibilities. ‘You can tie my hands to the ceiling and hang me up, and wait for the baby to fall down.’

For a moment, Hoss had been struck with horror. What had she proposed?

Then, her hands had curled around her own large body and the corners of her eyes had creased to frame a hearty smile that came out as laughter, when she enjoyed the fact that he had been fooled so easily. ‘Don’t worry, Erik min‘, she had continued. ‘Nature would be dad burn stupid if it would create only one way to survive.’

Absently, she had patted his large arm and continued her planning, folding towels and small baby blankets, and digging up old quilts and wraps she had made for her three first ones. A pair of white booties, that had been worn to a shade that resembled more the yellow onion or old bones, had caught Hoss’ attention, and made him sit still for a long moment, just staring at the little booties.

Elin had interrupted his silence, and her hands surrounding his humbled shoulders had felt so very light. ‘Hoss, dear, when I need it, you’ll send for Mrs. Eulalia Maud Sanders from the home-stead that way? I trust her.’

* * *

Elin used to give leftovers for the children to feed the little crow. They smashed the food small, and the fish and the liver kept her feathers shining and her eyes bright. “You should also use the mice and the shrews the cats bring as gifts to you”, she teased, and made the children protest. She took the bribes from the cats herself and played with the crow with the little rodents, making her hunt and catch the thrown food to keep her instincts awake. Elin showed Tor how to create a contact for the bird, and advised him to let the bird do as her nature would tell. She should spread her wings and try to fly, try to catch and try to hunt, no matter how easily she had accustomed herself to sitting on Tor’s arm or shoulder.

Hoss had wondered about her calm interest in the bird, even though she had opposed the new guest’s presence in the first place. “It must come from my father and his grandmother. Descending from her, he taught me to respect all life. Every life is precious, every life will bring death, but before the death comes, all life has had a purpose.” She raised her gray glistening eyes to him bright as the heart of a clear mountain spring, and let her hand run over the smooth feathers of the bird. “That is what I want to believe, too, because that is what is precious for me.”

If her hair had turned to grass and ferns, with little flowers and butterflies, Hoss wouldn’t have been surprised. So much of her expression was melted into the nature around her, even though she was sitting on a bench right outside their house. But then again, maybe their house wasn’t so far away. From what, Hoss didn’t know, and in the end, he didn’t exactly have to.

The crow didn’t speak, yet, although Rebecka used to finish her sentences with a croak to demonstrate they had a common tongue. Quite often Tor and Sigrid would answer her with croaks, too, and that made Elin roll her eyes and threaten to keep the table empty.

“You won’t”, Tor protested, and smiled at his mother very arrogantly. He rested his forks on his plate and leaned his arms against the table’s dark surface. “You eat so much you wouldn’t survive an hour by an empty table.”

Hoss raised one of his eyebrows warningly at the boy, and kept his blue eyes fixed at him, although he didn’t pause from helping himself to the fish and the potatoes with a delicious sauce Elin had composed for dinner. “You’ll keep that tone away from your mouth when you talk to your Ma, Thor.” Hoss inserted the large portion he’d gathered on his fork into his mouth, and pointed at the boy with the weapon’s four spikes. “I don’t care to hear no nonsense whatsoever of that sort, young man.”

Tor blew the air out between his pursed lips. “No.”

Hoss frowned and looked at his plate. “No, sir, young man.”

Tor made a face. “No, sir.” Hoss kept glowering at the boy, who had sank down with a glare, too.

Elin put her hand on the table with a loud thud. “Stop it. Both of you. Erik, Tor didn’t say anything he wouldn’t say any day. Or anything I wouldn’t hear from any of us, for that matter. Stop being grumpy.” Turning to Tor, she eyed the boy with an equally level gaze. “And you, you remember I hold the key to the kitchen pantry. I’ll have a feast of my own right there, if I’m the only one behaving like a human in this house.”

Tor laughed at her. “But if I’ll steal the key, you are in no shape to run after me!”

Rebecka smacked his arm and attached a snappy comment in her own mother tongue at Tor, and made her brother duck. His grin didn’t disappear, though, and Rebecka grew very irritated. She had taken a very defensive attitude towards her mother. She took after an idolizing way of imitating Elin, copying her way of walking, doing her chores and learning her routines, and the few dolls she had gotten from her Uncles lay arranged in baby beds, being well-nourished and cared for in her stories.

Sigrid took advantage of their squabble and ate what was left on Rebecka’s plate.

Elin rested her knife and fork, and peeked at Hoss’ face while he kept his eyes lowered down. “Hoss.” Her voice was almost as low as a whisper, and her crossed arms were warm and inviting despite their closed position. “Now you can be grumpy.” She nodded towards the wrangling children.

Hoss looked at her carefully held composure. He still felt she was making a mock of him, but nevertheless, he banged his hand on the table to require silence. “Can’t you finish your food in peace?” His frown shaded his blue eyes and the tassel of a front hair pointed against the children like an odd-shaped horn.

When he finished his plate in silence and wiped his mouth, Elin stood up with a lot of effort, leaning her hand over her back, and her movement made her children spring up very quickly to start to collect the plates.

“We’ll get the plates, Mamma“, Sigrid said, and hurried to pick up Hoss’ finished portion.
“We’ll do the dishes”, Tor promised, and pulled reluctant Rebecka to the kitchen, too.

“I guess I’ll swipe the floor”, they heard Rebecka say, before their voices were muffled behind the door. Elin looked at the direction to which they had gone, and they both heard them searching for cakes and sugar.

Elin sighed. “I’m sorry”, she said, and looked out from the window.

Hoss put the napkin on the table and folded it neatly, and didn’t say a word.

Elin came next to him and hauled his attention with her sheer presence. “I wasn’t thinking”, she said, and lowered her head. For a moment she stood still, and for a moment Hoss didn’t move, and finally she put her hand over his shoulder. “You once said to me, together, and for a moment, I forgot. I’m sorry.”

Surprised, Hoss raised his head.

“Ailynn…”

He pushed the chair further away from the table, and pulled her closer. “Sit down.”

“You can’t… I’m too big!”

“If I can’t, who can?” Hoss didn’t let his eyes away from her disturbed face. “Come here. Sit down.”

She came, and she was heavy, but he held her still on his arms like he had been able to hold her since the first time he ever tried. “I done forgot, too”, he said, and only looked gently over the familiar features of her fair face. “You done nothing wrong.”

“Yes, I’ve done, I’ve done so many things so wrong that even the angels lost count”, she said, and held her arm around his neck. “But I was lucky to get a husband to forgive it all.”

The glimmer of her gray eyes had poked some distant memories in his mind, and he nearly got lost in thoughts while looking at the curls that had escaped the crown braid, surrounding the pointy expressions of her cheekbones and her nose, that were now diluted with the softness given by the pregnancy.

Hoss could have stayed there for hours. Until she grunted quietly. Elin’s grunt was followed by a slight hunch and a pull of her hand to go over her belly, and her gaze ran away from Hoss to the future. “Here it comes… Hoss, Erik, I think in a day or a two you’ll hold me in two.”

Hoss couldn’t move. He was staring at Elin, with sheer horror in his panicked eyes that stared all blue and all wide at her.

“Ah, shucks, Hoss, let me down. I need to move.”

Hoss only squeezed her shoulders harder.

“Hoss, let me go.”

What had she said?

“Hoss, close your mouth and breathe! I said it’s a day or a two, now let me go.”

Hoss’ fingers and feet got all cold and he could feel his face turn white.

“Hoss, I said it might take a day or two to start proper. A week if you don’t release me right now.”

Did his arms shake? Oh, no. He should not drop Elin, not now.

“Let go of me or I’ll keep it where it stands and that’s final!” Elin pushed herself out from his grip and started to walk around the table, feeling her body and listening to what it tried to say.

She was going into labor.

Dad burn labor.

Dear God.

* * *

Sigrid took Rebecka with her on the buckboard, when Hoss sent them to get Pa. Ben had promised to come and stay over with the children, if the birth was delayed. Tor was sent for Mrs. Sanders with another cart, another horse tied to the back of it to help to fetch Mrs. Sanders very quickly.

“Should I send for the doctor, too?” Hoss asked, worriedly.

Elin frowned. “He saw me just recently and suspected everything would be just fine. He’ll have more job saving the lives of the other…” A contraction interrupted Elin’s sentence, and Hoss hunched, and tried to jump to all four directions at once. He waved his hands helplessly, and ran his fingers through his hair.

“What can I do, Ailynn?”

Elin leaned herself against the door frame, and breathed, while the effort was oozing away to the background. “Be useful. Stop fussing. Anything.” She held out her hand, and as Hoss came closer, she pulled him down from the chest of his shirt, getting his face very close to her own while she was still a bit bent down. “I don’t need an outraged deer, Hoss, I need somebody solid as a rock. Can you do it?”

Hoss swallowed, and nodded, even though his blue eyes were an image of shock and apprehension, even a bit of reluctance to let time pass by in fear of what would follow. “Sure”, he said, and never before had his squeak sounded so much like Joe’s, being all whimpering and high and coming from very high up in his throat.

Elin straightened up, and put her both hands on his shoulders. “Are you, I mean, sure?” She looked at him very gravely. “You don’t have to come.”
Her comment made Hoss swallow once more, but he shook his head. “No ma’am, I mean, Ailynn, I ain’t done shrunk from baby birth before, what makes you think I’d do so now?”

Elin started to breathe heavily, anticipating, but not yet feeling another contraction. “They were not your babies, before.” She turned and walked a bit, holding her belly and eyeing the ceiling, or the sky behind it.
Hoss felt very little and pointless in the world.

* * *

The thuds of the horses’ hooves sounded very familiar, and Hoss was grateful to see his Pa come riding first. He saw the familiar buckboard carrying Rebecka and Sigrid, too, but when Ben saw him strolling to and fro in the yard, he spurred Buck to a gallop and rushed to him, stepping down and ground-tying the nervous horse. His eyes were deep and reflective, when he took Hoss’ arm and held it in his hands. “Did it start already?”

Hoss looked down, and returned his blue eyes to his father’s face. “No, not yet. I sent Thor for Mrs. Sanders, and Elin is getting ready.” He followed the figures of his two girls, fixing his thoughts to the easy familiar things he knew he could understand and comprehend, maybe even control, but the buckboard couldn’t keep his attention nailed for long.

Behind the girls, a chestnut horse and a pinto came following with their riders, who pulled the horses to a halt and dismounted slowly. The other one took his black hat off and pressed the hat against his chest; the other one leaned his hands on his hips and swung his light weight on the balls of his feet.

Adam stepped forward and held his hand out, to rest it upon Hoss’ shoulder. “You didn’t think we’d stay away from such an important event?” he asked, his face a bit stiff but his eyes revealing to Hoss all the buried emotion that was hidden under his calm mask.

Joe came out on his other side, and slapped his arm and his back – a bit too hard, maybe – and flashed an unreserved smile that split his face in two. “Heck, no, brother!” he said, and his face looked mighty proud even though he was watching Hoss’ eyes filling with tears from very close.

Ben did something he had not done for a long time; he grabbed Hoss from the scruff of his neck and smiled, no, laughed, with his whole face creasing from the fortunate memories that ran behind his eyes. “Just wait, Hoss”, he said, and chuckled. “Just wait.” Hoss couldn’t help a silly grin to come to his face, to fight with the nervous frown of anxiety in turns.

Ben released his hold and turned around, and held his arms out for Sigrid, who let him lift her up on his arms. The jealous Rebecka searched the arms of Adam, and Joe just kept slapping Hoss’ his back, grinning like a bobcat that had lost his mind. “You’re gonna be a Pa, Hoss”, he said, and a giggle came out of his throat. “If we weren’t so close to the mother and the kids, I’d for sure scream out loud my doggone worst ‘yahoo’!”

Hoss grinned at him, trying to adapt. “Ain’t that just somethin’, Joe?” His twinkling eyes turned to watch inside himself. “I’m gonna be a Pa.”

* * *

Elin was waiting in the bath house. The sound of the other horse alerted Hoss and got him springing out from the little steam house, and running to the female passenger as if his life depended on her. “I sure am glad to see you, Mrs. Eulalia San…” he began, but the lady cut in curtly.

“Maud.” She looked at him so sternly that the worst piercing stare of Elin meant nothing compared to her. “Plain Maud. And God thank us if you’ll have time to say even that, when you really need me the most.” She hopped down from the buggy and left Hoss gaping for a moment, before she inquired him the direction of the mother.

Finally Hoss was able to move. “This way, ma’am”, he said, and lead her to where Elin was waiting, starting to fold down to lean on the floor.
“Maud”, she said, and raised her black, straight eyebrows. “If you still remember I have a name, when the time seems too fast.” She stepped in with him, and they both heard a shout that made the logs shiver and Hoss’ ears ring.

“Good”, said Maud. “If she has so much strength to shout, she should have plenty to push.”

* * *

Hoss held Elin’s head on his arm. Never again.

He would never ask Elin to go through so much.

She turned her head wearily, and the sweat curled the front locks around her face when she looked at him with a seed of a smile upon her tired face. “I’d do it a hundred times if I’d only live long enough.”

Maud patted the baby with soft flannel and towels, and hummed silently and off-tune, while she kept the little one warm by turning folds of cloth around the small body. An occasional cry of the baby jolted Hoss’ ears, but he kept silent, seeing Maud and Elin so silent.

He thought it had lasted an eternity.

“A good thing it lasted only so little”, Maud said, and for the first time that night, she smiled. “Fine job, Eelyn, you’ve been real picture of a perfect birth.”
Hoss tried to move his fingers, which had been very hurt during one of Elin’s pushes while she had clung to him for her dear life. A horse had trodden over his fingers once, but she had done more damage to him than the animal. Hoss couldn’t be sure if his ears were stunned from the howls he had heard, or if the world was really silent, but either way, it made him feel himself surrounded in clouds of cotton.

“I feel so tired”, Elin said, and pressed closer against Hoss’ arm. “Just attach the baby here…” she motioned below her neck, “and wake me up in a day… or two.” A tired giggle came out of her mouth, and her face was wrinkled in an expression of half a laughter and half a sob. Hoss stroked her hair away from her face, when Maud brought the baby by and set the bundle on Elin’s arms.
Hoss held his breath.

Elin took the covers away and pressed the baby against her skin, breathing smoothly and examining the silhouette of the thick black hair and the folds of the skin on the little arms and the legs with her fingers. Hoss saw her eyelashes resting upon her cheeks while she looked down and ran her fingers over the little spine and the cheeks and the ears and took hold of the little hands.

“Hoss… Erik.” Hoss curled his hand around her and the baby, and his big hands closed her smooth and accustomed hands around the newborn child. He couldn’t take his eyes off of the tiny creature, and from the corner of his eye he saw Elin looking at him and smiling at him behind tears. “You’ve got a boy, Hoss.”

They had a son.

* * *

It was already very dark, or it could have been getting lighter again, Hoss couldn’t tell. He himself had been born under the stars, had his father told, and read out from the journal how he had seen the daylight on the hard trail towards the West.

Hoss came out to the yard with a little bundle in his arms, his face shining from the glimmer of the blue eyes, and his hair pointing in all directions like rays of an odd earthly sun. His tall figure wasn’t hunched at all, even though he held the wraps of the cloth protected from the outside air with his large chest and his thick arms. Ben jumped up from the chair where he had been waiting and shouted indoors. “It’s Hoss!”

As Hoss came closer to the porch, Ben took a few leaping steps towards him, and leaned against his middle son to get a good look at the baby. His face melted into a radiant smile, and he lifted his gaze to see Hoss’. Hoss looked at his Pa straight in the eyes, feeling the happiness that carried through to him from the hand Ben held against his own large figure. They both knew how it was. Hoss pressed his lips together to form a proud smile. “You’ve got a fine grandson, Pa.”

Ben just laughed, without any words, and blinked his eyes to hide the dew. “How is she?” he asked, the smile creasing his face so that it was a little wonder how his brown eyes could shine so much from the shadows of the wrinkles. Hoss smiled.

“I reckon she’s a miracle, Pa.” He wiped his own forehead and grinned still, feeling tears in his eyes but caring none of it. “She went through a lot but she’ll pull through. She’ll be just fine, Pa.”

Ben looked down at the baby and held his hands out to set his fingers below his head and his little body, and Hoss gave the newborn son in his arms and watched the new Grandpa take look at his grandchild. His gray hair, the dark eyes and the strong figure had made him feared among men who faced him as an opponent, but Hoss had seen the tender side himself, and could now see it again in the ways his Pa carefully held the baby and studied his face.

Joe and Adam came out with the children, and all five of them stood still, staring, until Joe made a move and came to look at the boy in his father’s arms. Ben eyed at his youngest son, and then took a better hold of the baby, to hand him over to Joe. Hoss remembered, how surprised and glad Joe had been once, when they had helped a Paiute woman to deliver her child, and after it all Joe had had the baby in his hands. He was smiling, and very silent laughter came out of his lips when he traveled back to his own dreams again.

Adam strolled to them, too, and looked over Joe’s shoulder. Joe passed the baby on to his arms, and Adam took him very gently on his lean fingers, resting the tiny weight in the curl of his arm and pursing his lips to the baby’s red face. Adam had held both Hoss and Joe similarly, but now his duty was replaced from big brother to Uncle. His dark eyelashes hid his eyes from his father and his brothers, and saved the message all undiluted for the baby. “So, you’re the new Cartwright”, he said softly, and stroked the little frail cheeks with his finger gently.

Hoss looked at them, feeling very proud, and his heart felt a bit too tight to work properly, when Adam took the baby to the children by the porch and showed him to them. “Here, here is your new baby brother”, he said, and showed the wrinkly face that was surrounded by spiky dark hair to his siblings. All of the children leaned closer, and Adam put the baby in the arms of Sigrid. “Hold very tight, but carefully”, he instructed, and helped Sigrid find a secure hold.

Hoss just looked at his family, and swiped his eye gently as a thought, before he strolled to his kids and pressed his arms around them all. The smiles and the glinting eyes of his first three were emphasized with delighted little screams that were muffled, to respect the sacred nature of a baby birth. When the baby traveled from the hands of Sigrid to the hands of Rebecka and Tor, Hoss stole a moment to look at his Pa, at Adam, and finally at Joe, before he returned his attention to his new son and the little hands around him that held him very close. He took the baby in his arms and sat down, and the rest of them gathered around him, just to look.

His family.

Wasn’t it just somethin’.

* * *

Hoss was holding the baby in his arms, and even though the baby couldn’t do much more than stare, a bit unfocused, all around with his blue large eyes, he could have stared at the motion and the round face from day till night without stopping. Hoss’ own face was serene and his blue eyes were bluer than Lake Tahoe, when he observed the delicate features from the wraps of the cloth and the wool that surrounded the baby, and his fingers ran over the little one very carefully, touching with a very faint gesture but feeling it all in his own fingertips.

His wife had told him once, that the first baby from her first marriage had died. She had been very young, and the kicks of the baby very feeble in the end. When the time had come, all too soon for her, she had been very scared. The baby girl had been on its way feet first, the cord around her neck so many times that when she had finally been out, she hadn’t had the strength to cry or to latch properly, and she had been lost.

She had wanted to call the baby girl Helga, to resemble the word of holy in her language, but the name had never been carved on any cross or a stone, because the little sacred thing had been called so soon to meet her gods. Elin had cried a lot and feared when the second baby came. But Thor had been quick to come head first as it’s supposed to be, and he had screamed and banged his fists from the first breath of life.

Hoss looked at his own first-born. She had promised she’d go to the other-world to haul this baby back, if anything had gone wrong. ‘He brought me too much trouble to come this far, I won’t let him go.’ Elin had smiled at Hoss, assuring him with her unfaltering belief, and grunted at the hard kick that came against her insides. She had always talked of a boy; Hoss had thought it would be a girl.

No, there was no doubt that this one had strength. The weight of probably a good ten-eleven pounds promised well, and the way the little mouth was able to be fed made the weight add up at a daily rate. Even the way the shouts were able to silence the parents and the three other kids was far from being weak.

Two pairs of identical blue eyes met, and even if the other one wasn’t able to comprehend very much from the encounter, the other one was a picture of wonder and joy, even a bit of respect and humility in front of the little piece of life he had been given after such long waiting.

The baby tried to pick up his finger when he touched very gently the little lips, and the little reaction made Hoss grin almost foolishly. He should go and fetch the Ma soon, but he didn’t want to interrupt this moment alone just yet.

* * *

Ben and Elin were sitting on a blanket and watching Hoss show Rebecka how to fold diapers and wrap them around the boy to soak the most that came out of him. Sigrid leaned against the Pa’s shoulder and pointed with her fingers, trying to advise the way the folds would be better and more absorbent, and on the other side Tor was leaning on the other shoulder, keeping his mouth shut and his chin resting against his fist. They couldn’t hear what the children asked, for their voices were still too shrill and soft for the wind to break apart. But they heard Hoss’ low and full voice, when he helped Rebecka to hold the baby better in her arms. “That’s the way.”

“He makes a good father, don’t you think?” Elin asked from Ben. She shifted her weight and tried to be a bit more comfortable on the hip on which she was resting, and threw her long braid behind her shoulder.

“He’d make a very good mother, too”, Ben said with a chuckle and cast his eyes down, remembering some episodes from their life when they had had little children over the house, before Hoss had married Elin. “If he keeps going on like this, you’ll soon forget what your son looks like.”

Elin took an apple and bit its red-and-yellow surface. The squishy sound of the juicy apple disappeared as soon as she swallowed very quickly. “I carried the boy already for nine months, Ben. I think I’ll survive for these hours away.” Her sarcasm tried to hide the fact that her eyes were turned to watch her husband holding a girl on his lap in the middle of the long grass, while two other children were poking the bundle on the arms of the smallest one resting on Hoss’ crossed legs. Although, it was getting a bit hopeful to call the two oldest ones children anymore, Tor was almost shaving and Sigrid’s waist had narrowed a bit above her skirt’s hems. “He looks so happy. So much… at ease. Ben, are you proud?”

She turned her serene eyes at Ben for a moment. The Grandpa was able to see the mysterious glimmer of the fudge-colored freckles, before he blinked his eyes and the moment passed. “I am, Elin, I’m very proud. I can say I’m very proud of both Hoss, and you.”

Elin bit the apple again, and turned her head away. “I’m glad. I was hoping so much to make all of you proud.”

Her comment made Ben lift up his folded knees and hug them, like he had done more often when he had been younger. He wouldn’t have admitted the passing of time to anybody, but in the presence of Elin, he allowed himself to think about it. “It all seems so odd, now he’s there and all the things he’s been through. We’ve been through.” A thought occurred to him. “Inger used to sing the Swedish tunes. Hoss’ mother. Do you think you might know the same ones?”

When Elin started to sing silently with her old words, Ben sat and watched Hoss with the children. If the songs or the melodies were the same or not, he couldn’t tell after all this time. Still, their rhythm and pace were enough for him to rest his thoughts in the past, until the cries of his grandson got so demanding that he was brought to his oozing mother.

* * *

As much as Elin tried to stuff the boy, her milk was becoming a problem – not because of lack, but of abundance. As soon as she was able to trust her feet and her head, she had asked Maud to pass the word and inquire, if there was a mother lost, or a mother not able to feed enough. “It seems I was built up to feed more than one”, she chuckled, when she sat in the rocking chair and held a towel at the other side of her, while she kept the boy cradled against her own body to nurse. “All my babies were fat.” The boy would pause for a moment, and start to swallow more, while Elin kept her hand curled under his head and watched the boy eat. Sometimes Elin rubbed her breasts to help with the pressure of the milk.

And one day, a little young shadow of a mother came to Elinslott and asked very shyly, if Elin could help. She had a crying little grasshopper for a child in her bony arms, and she referred to Maud Sanders many times. Hoss took her to the kitchen where Elin was nursing the boy.

Elin took one look at the dark circles around the eyes and the gray shade of the unfilled skin, and ordered the girl to sit down. Indeed, she wasn’t much more than a girl; she sat at the edge of the chair and her eyes looked hungrily at the chubby baby latched greedily on Elin’s bosom, while Elin had turned her head away. “Sigrid!” she shouted, and interrupted the lunch of the boy for a moment. “I need you here!”

Sigrid came from the great room where she had been learning to play the guitar Adam had brought her from his trips, and looked at the new guest with her wide gray eyes. Her braid was running around her head like a crown, and made her look like a princess of Elin’s castle. “What do you need me for, Mamma?”

“Take out eggs and ham and the bread and prepare a lunch like you’d be making it for my Hoss. Your Pa”, she added, and looked at the young mother in front of her. “Fry the eggs, put a lot of ham and the onions, see if we have vegetables.” Obediently, Sigrid started chopping the food and took the skillet that was hanging on the wall.

Elin motioned the new acquaintance to break the bread and add a lot of butter. “We sit here long enough to make you finish it all, too, understood? First, you must eat.” She saw that the boy was falling asleep on her arms. When he finished, she put him in a basket that rested on the table, and didn’t wait to see if he’d sleep or not; he’d be all right both ways. She took the baby from the girl and cuddled her on her other arm, and saw the little eyes open and the little hands move.

Elin gave the baby a satisfied smile when her finger close to the baby girl’s mouth made her gape and grasp towards what was offered. “At least you know, what to do, and that’s good.” Elin changed the towel to the other side and rolled her shirt up, and saw the tiny girl get a good grasp and start to eat with eagerness. Elin observed the baby and as everything was as it should be, she raised her eyes to the malnourished mother. “I am Elin Cartwright. But you must call me just Elin. Who are you?”

“Mary-Ann, ma’am. I mean, Eelyn. Mary-Ann Keller.”

Elin stared at her plate at which she was nibbling nervously, and the look made the young woman eat with more speed. Elin smiled at Sigrid and thanked her for the help, while she served the eggs and the meat, and held her eyes observing the baby girl occasionally, too. “Good bye, Hoss”, she said. “Have a good day at the field.”

Hoss fiddled his hat and shifted his weight on his feet from left to right. Elin smiled to Mary-Ann, and asked her to make a piece of bread for her, too.

“Greet your father and your brothers for me, Hoss.”

There was no choice for Hoss but to leave outside, where Tor would be waiting with the horses.

* * *

By that, Elin and Mary-Ann became friends.

Sometimes, Elin took the buckboard and one or all of the older children to the Keller’s. If Hoss rode along, he’d usually find Elin sitting a baby at each arm, feeding them, or doing chores with the young mother and guiding her with the motherhood from her own experience. When Mary-Ann was recovered well, and Elin wasn’t necessary for their family anymore, she continued to go, anyway. Maybe she felt sympathy towards the shy and battered-down young woman.

Mary-Ann’s husband, Ted, was working at the mine for long hours. As Mary-Ann had mostly been accompanied only by her own younger sister, the company of the older woman cheered her up and made her smile more often. Her little sister Louise was around Tor’s age, and as she knew some of the other children from the homesteads further away, she introduced the Cartwrights to her own friends.

Hoss was worried; Elin was happier than a spring brook. “Isn’t it wonderful to see, how they finally make their own friends?” she said with laughter, and handed the baby over to Hoss, so that he could burp him and lull him to sleep over his shoulder.

* * *

“What do you think?” The baby lay between Hoss and Elin, and the ticks and motions of the arms and legs were as little controlled as the round movements of the un-paced eyes. Hoss took gently hold of the little foot, and watched the baby to react to the odd pull from a distant limb.

Elin raised head and leaned on her hand. “I don’t know. Does he look enough like a Karl? It is supposed to mean a good man, a strong and reliable and a friendly man.” She smiled and extended her hand to touch Hoss’ hair, before she pulled it back to her side. “Just like Hoss.”

Hoss tried to look at the face of the baby, and paused thoughtfully at the dark dangly hair that covered the boy’s head and nearly curled towards his face. “He seems to look like a little troll Carl at the moment”, he said, and made Elin laugh. He raised his blue eyes up to her to ask what was so funny.

“Trollkarl… that’s something different. It’s a… person who can do magic. Spells.” Elin’s eyes were hidden under her light brow and the vague eyelashes, when the smile hid her glimmering eyes.

“If my boy is a sorcerer, then I’ll have little chance of changing his name. Or what do you think?” Hoss smiled at Elin and returned his attention to the boy who was making some sort of sounds, and holding his mouth closed, or wide open at an expression directed at something, letting Hoss see his little gums and the little red tongue. “Carl. Carl Eric.”

The expressions of little Carl were wrinkled and the mouth was left open, while the sounds got louder and more adamant. “Lilla Karl Cartwright”, Elin said, and lowered down to be able to pull the boy to eat. “A bit from my world, a bit from your world, but in a way we can both say and hear.”

Hoss kept quiet while he looked at the way little to-be-Carl kept waving his arms and kicking randomly with his soft knitted booties, while Elin nursed. She looked at her husband for the thousandth time, amused. “What would you think, if there was somebody watching you all the time, when you eat?”

“Ain’t never bothered me none.” Hoss dug deeper on the bed and kept looking.

* * *

Hoss yawned on the doorstep, and decided that he should sleep at the large guest-room to be fresh for the morning. He had promised to be in town with Adam. Elin had advised him to dig his head under a pillow, and that was exactly what she did when the baby – Carl – woke up because of wet clothes and Hoss would get up. Hoss could only but wonder, how through her sleep she was able to differentiate between the cries of hunger and cry for dry cloth, but she did.

Hoss yawned again, and thought it would be difficult to fall asleep without the kicks against his back or his arm. He heard the creak of a door and soft footsteps behind his back, and saw gradually the figure of Sigrid fold next to him. The girl’s side touched his at the staircase that was too narrow for them both, and Hoss tried to shift a little to make a show of at least trying to squeeze in.

Sigrid’s hair was open and it fell over her back, long and thick and wavy. “I woke up, too”, she whispered, and hugged her knees. “Pa, why do babies cry so much?”

Hoss patted the girl on her head and smiled at the scruff of her neck. “I reckon it must be so that we’d wanna them to grow up real soon”, he said, and looked at Sigrid’s arm that had all of a sudden grown so long.

Sigrid shifted, too, and leaned slightly against him. Probably, under the mass of her hair, she frowned. “But then it is annoying you to the limits, when Tor is banging the doors and shouting at us or at you”, she said, without any philosophy in her tone. Just yet.

Hoss put his hand over her shoulder and rubbed it a bit. “Maybe it’s so that we’d start to think how easy it is with ’em babies, and want to have them a bit more.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, Pa.”

“Maybe it don’t. But it’s the middle of the night, ain’t it, Secret?”

Sigrid looked at him in the eyes and the night colored their faces into different shades of purple. “But when is the time when we’re where we should be?”

Hoss pursed his lips and looked at his toes, keeping his face towards the girl but tilting his other ear down. “Well, I don’t exactly know, but I guess it would stop us from moving forward, if this was as far as we’d think we’d ever get.” He yawned, and missed Sigrid’s face for some seconds. When his attention was directed back at her, she was all calmness again.

“Pa, do you think it would be all right, if I’d go to the barn to see the foal?”

Granen had finally foaled, and the children had been eager to offer to feed the new horse, to groom her with their hands and to hug her neck that stood short and funny-looking in comparison to the height of her long legs. They had named her Kotte; while the name of Granen meant spruce, Kotte was her little cone.

“Go ahead, Secret. But don’t stay long; you should get enough sleep.” Hoss stood up and helped Sigrid get up, too, and kissed her on the cheek.

“Remember, only for a while. I’m getting to bed and that’s what you oughta do, as well.”

“Yes, Pa. Just for a moment.”

* * *

Carl was nursing greedily, and Elin held his body clutched above her thighs. He was a thick-folded little boy, whose arms and legs were chubby and made Hoss even wonder, if he’d ever be slim enough to walk. Elin laughed at his doubt, and told that the rest of the children, now lean as twigs, had been like Carl when they were small. Carl stopped eating, slowly, and the pauses got longer.

Hoss pressed his chin over Elin’s shoulder, and felt the scent of the birch leaves and loganberries evaporating from Elin’s skin, mixing to the sweet smell of the baby Carl who was about to doze off. When he put his hands over her sides and her arms, he felt the familiar way in which she melted down from where he touched, and when his hands curved around her shape, the meander of her movement made him press his nose closer to the ginger scent of the cinnamon colored hair and wonder, if the scent would come through to the taste.

Elin took Carl away from her breast and set him in the cradle.

When she turned around, Hoss kissed her in a way that he had never thought two people could kiss. When her hands took a hold of his neck and twirled through his hair, he did not even think he’d stop.

* * *

XVI

Hop Sing had gracefully accepted Elin to weed his garden, when she had told that she needed something productive for hands to do. The baby lay in a basket near her, and Adam took the alert and curious baby in his hands, raising him up to the air and rubbing his belly against his own head, disheveling the black curly hair all and totally. Hoss smiled at the wide ogling eyes of little Carl Cartwright while his Uncle made him squeak and gape with the tickling feeling, and strolled to the front yard where Joe was sawing wood.

Seeing Joe struggle with the saw, Hoss picked a stick from the ground and pulled his jackknife out, and started to whittle. He made a larger round to the barn, and returned with a smaller round, approaching Joe finally. Joe cussed quietly but a bit agitated already, and motioned his hand to Hoss while he held the log in place with his foot. “Oh, would you mind giving me a hand?!” he asked, a bit heatedly.

Hoss’ eyebrows moved a bit under the rim of his hat, before he walked a few steps around Joe and the log. Joe started to thank him already before he had the time to answer his “Not at all, brother, not at all”. He sat slowly and stoutly on the wood. “Saw away.”

“Oh, I thought I said a hand“, Joe said, and Hoss grinned very briefly at the annoyance in his voice as he imagined Joe’s curl-tossing twitch when he tried to make the saw go further. Hoss laughed, a bit mischievously, and continued to whittle.

When Joe started to saw, Hoss turned around and shook his jackknife a bit pointedly. “You know, Joe, you should put a little hog lard on that blade, it’ll sure make things easier.”

“Really? Remind me to render you down sometime”, Joe answered, and made them both laugh. Although Hoss’ laugh was sincerely appreciating a pun at Joe, Joe’s smile had nothing in it that would imply amusement.

“You know, sure enough, Joe”, Hoss said and continued carving the stick, “if you’d put a little bit more offset to that blade, it would sure make things easier.”

Joe threw the saw to the ground, grabbed the stick from Hoss and threw it away. “Will you cut that out?” He nearly swung his fist at Hoss, before a voice interrupted and cut short their quarrel.

“Heeey, you almost hit me with that!” An elderly man rode to the yard with a black horse, and pulled the trot to halt. Elin had come to the front yard, too, and held the gurgling and babbling baby in her arms, allowing him to watch the scene too.

Joe brushed his hands to his trousers and nodded to the man. “Hey I’m… I’m sorry, Mr. Jenkins”, he said, while Hoss greeted Abe with a surprised ‘howdy there’.

“Howdy there, Hoss, Joe, Mrs. Cartwright”, Abe greeted, and turned to the men. “Your brother Adam around?” Abe leaned to the saddle horn and peered at the boys from under his sloppy hat.

Joe and Hoss looked at the man in his checkered shirt, and Joe motioned his head towards the house, his hands resting on his hips like they usually did.

“Yeah, he’s in the house or behind the kitchen garden, he’ll be out in a minute.”
Hoss couldn’t keep quiet, though. “What brings you all the way out here, Abe?” He sneered and looked questioningly up at the man.

“I’ve got some business with your brother”, Abe started, and made Joe eager to interrupt.

“Yeah…Wha… what kind of business, eh?”

“No, look here, sonny”, Abe said and arched out from the saddle to hover over Joe. “My business is here with your brother; you just go fetch him, please.” The last was no longer a question, and the pointing forefinger made the speech a trifle more biting. Joe shrunk a bit and shrugged, and Hoss could hear Elin stifle a giggle, even though a muffled little sound escaped.

Joe pursed his lips and surrendered. “Yes, sir”, he said, and turned towards the house.

Abe dismounted with a weary groan. “How’s Adam feeling, Hoss?” he asked, when he turned back to Hoss and adjusted his trousers from the belt after the long ride.

Hoss frowned gently and swung his weight on the boot heels. “Aaw, fine, I reckon, and you, Abe?”

“Aw-all right”, Abe answered, and adjusted the gun belt. “Adam wasn’t feeling too good last time I seen ‘im.” The intonation rose and made it a question to Hoss.

Hoss kept twirling his fingers around the knife and the wood, puzzled, and furrowed slightly. “When was that.” Something in what Abe said didn’t ring right to him.

Abe Jenkins murmured, while thinking of the passing of the days. “Uhmmm not more than a week ago, up to my place.”

Hoss turned his gaze away, and chuckled. “Uh..hah, Abe. I think you’re mistaken, Abe.”

The older man twisted his head with a bundle of sounds signaling for an objection, and strolled further to tie his horse. Adam came out from the house in his yellow coat. “Abe, what are you doing in this neck of the woods?” he said, and offered his hand for a greeting. “I heard you wanted to talk to me.”

Abe took the hand, hesitating with words. Hoss stepped closer, and bent a bit towards the talkers. “Abe… Abe says last time he saw you you was in pretty bad shape, Adam.”

Adam’s smile had a few different emotions while it twitched a bit, trying to stay at the side of amused, though. He laughed curtly, and hugged his shoulders. “Is this… eh… some attempt of a feeble joke? You in on this, Abe?”

But Abe was serious. “I don’t know what’ya talking about. But I’m right glad to be seeing you all right again.”

Both Hoss and Adam’s eyebrows rose, Hoss’ more because he was standing behind Abe. Abe continued. “How did you like that horse I give you?”

Adam’s lips pursed and squeezed a little in disbelief. “Horse…?”

“Yeah.” Abe lifted his left shoulder. “The best one I had. Valuable animal. Now I ain’t trying to heckle you none, Adam, I had to come to Virginia City anyhow an’ thought to drop by. Not that I don’t trust you to be getting around to pay me, but… eh… ”

Adam rolled his head and cut his quote. “Abe, what are you talking about.” It was not a question.

“Well, the horse I give you when you came to me all beat up and broke.” He was getting a bit agitated by the tone of the Cartwrights.

Adam was still all baffled. “Beat up and broke…?”

“Yeah.” Finally somebody said something Abe understood. “I gave you the horse, don’t you remember? On the promise you’d give me fifty dollars when you got back home?”

“I haven’t left this ranch for ten days”, Adam said with deep vexation over the matter. “Ask Hoss. That’s right?”

Hoss frowned, and released his mutter when he answered. “That’s right, Abe.” But then he returned back to the furrow.

“Well, I don’t understand it. It had to be you, or some feller that looked just like you.” Abe emphasized his words with a few nods of the head that would have made a bullwhip humble.

Adam’s hunch resolved and his lifted up his finger with a smile. “Tha-at’s right, Abe, it was the fellow that looked like me.”

“Well… when I called him Adam, he answered back, just as nice as you please!” Abe was getting frustrated. It had probably been a fine horse, and he could probably see also a good fifty dollars flying away right under his nose.

Adam looked at him. “Why… why not, if he were beat up, and broke, and you were offering a horse to a feller named ‘Adam’.”

“But I give him the horse because I thought it was you.” There was still a bit of accusation left in Abe’s tone. “That ain’t fair!”

Hoss felt so too. “Adam, it’s, Abe’s right. Dad burn it, if he gave a horse to a jasper who looks like you, it ain’t his fault. He was just trying to do you a favour. If you…”

Adam cut in. “Will you… shut.. up?” Hoss swallowed, and kept his mouth shut, although his face was a mixture of moving eyebrows and twisting lips. Elin chuckled in the background. Adam held a pause, thinking for a moment, and continued with a biting tone.

“Which way did this fellow head, when he left your place.” Each word came out separately, with long pauses in between.

“Aww… he took the road to Virginia City.” Abe kept peering at Adam.

Adam blinked. “All right. I’ll go into town and see if I can trace this fellow down.” He pressed his lips together and shifted a bit uncomfortably under his yellow coat. “You’ll get your money, one way or another.” He started to walk towards the barn to saddle Sport.

A thought occurred to Hoss, and made him chuckle a bit. A smile crept on his face in ways he couldn’t prevent. “Hey, Adam. Why don’t you leave this jasper to be, he’s liable to marry you a wife or something.”

Hoss bent his head and kept cutting his nails with the knife he held, avoiding the little murder in Adam’s vexed eyes when he pulled to a halt and turned slowly to look at Hoss.

Adam forced a light laughter out from his mouth and held his arm out to slap Hoss on the cheek with his hand, first lightly, and then a couple of times quite hard. Hoss laughed, sneered, and his tongue came out from between his teeth. When Adam strolled away like the ground would have made his boot soles gingery, he burst out in laughter with Abe. Elin’s chiming laughter accompanied them, and she waved little Carl’s hand for a good-bye to Uncle Adam.

Hoss slapped Abe on the shoulder. “Hey, Abe. How about a cup of coffee? Come on in.”

* * *

Virginia City was greeting a lively and bright day. Horses were moving to the east and the west, and people were passing by in their suits, their dresses, their saloon gowns or their wrangler’s hats. Elin walked beside Hoss, and her hand was resting on his arm.

Carl had fallen asleep, and as he usually slept for an hour or two, she had asked Roy Coffee if Sigrid and Carl could be left at the Sheriff’s office for a while. The girly innocence in her eyes had charmed Sheriff Coffee behind his gray moustache so that he had agreed. Elin had turned her back quickly and Hoss had seen Sigrid to dig up a book from the baby’s basket, and wondered, how she had had time to smuggle it there in the first place. He might need to take a look at that book. Roy Coffee could be fooled, perhaps, but Hoss intended to stay firm.

Elin smiled beside him, and watched the people walk. It was her favorite pastime, when she was out, and she seemed to become so young again when she observed the passers-by with her sharp pale eyes. Hoss was rather proud, she was radiant in her dress, and the way her body was responding to the needs of the child was making her figure… full. Hoss’ mouth was a bit dry and he had to look away and hold his fist in his pocket balled tight, to be able to concentrate on the affairs they needed to fix at the bank and at the land office, but it wasn’t enough to stop him from being proud of the waving and the vibrations that the steps caused throughout her feminine figure.

They passed the International House, and the Silver Dollar, and started to approach the bank, when Elin’s skirt was caught at a rail where not a single horse was tied. She stopped to release herself, and her bright green outfit was like a red blanket to a bull, when it came to a very drunken cowboy leaning on the pump next to the trough. The cowboy rose his empty bottle, peered at the woman first through the glass and then without the disturbing bottle, and belched. “My goodness, ain’t that there one good-looking woman.” He added a hiccup to finish the sentence.

Hoss’ eyebrows pulled together in a very glum position, and he gave his arm to Elin. “You’re talking to my wife.”

“Well, ain’t that there some woman for a wife, I’ll say.” The cowboy took a wobbly step to cross his left leg with his right, and stared at Elin from head to toe and back, finding the nicest place to rest his rosy eyeballs around her chest height. “Hel-lo, beauty. Ain’t you just enough of a wife for two!”

It was done even before Hoss noticed; the cowboy was eating dust on the ground and he was hovering above him, his fist clenched tight and waiting above the swirling body to hit again if the scum even thought of rising up. “I said you’re talking to my wife.”

Hoss’ nostrils were flaring, and after breathing very heavily to watch the drunken man wail and gather his balance on his four feet, he realized the man had been just that – very drunk. The cowboy stood up and started to walk backwards, his body all hunched and his hand rose up to beg Hoss not to hit again. Hoss was still extremely furious, but he had learned to control his tearing rage.

Hoss forced his shoulders to relax and his fist to open, and turned to Elin. “Ailynn… I’m… sorry. I lost my temper.” He raised his blue and wistful eyes to meet her gray sharp ones, but her eyes were glimmering in a way that was not accusing.

She tucked in Hoss’ shirt collar and pulled his vest to sit a bit tighter around him. Lean fingers played with the buttons before she pinched the string tie just for the habit’s sake. “Don’t apologize.” Her eyes glinted disturbingly. “Maybe there are more of them.”

Hoss observed her tongue swipe her teeth under her closed lips, and all of a sudden it was a very hot day.

* * *

“… and that’s how I said goodbye and came home.” Adam lifted Carl up into the air, shook him a bit from side to side and returned him standing on his lap. “That impostor Tom Burns ain’t using my name and my reputation anymore, but it was a sad way to find out about that in the end.” He puckered his lips to the drooling boy, who took a firm hold of his collar with the courage of a pioneer who didn’t care for the unshaven coarseness by his neck and his chin at all.

Rebecka was staring at Uncle Adam with her eyes wide, and Hoss couldn’t right tell what Sigrid’s face was expressing. A bit of puzzlement and awe, but did he see also a small hint of… longing? He clapped his hands and stood up. “Come on, kids. It was an interesting story, and I’m mighty happy, too, that Adam came home without as much as a scratch.” He went to the girls and patted them on the shoulders, and motioned them to go out before they climbed up to their own rooms. “Bedtime.”

Carl took a firm hold on the skin on Adam’s throat, pulling it as far as he could. Adam shifted a bit and took the fist away, but Carl pinched a handful again, turning his head in a way that still looked rather uncontrolled and wobbly. The boy concentrated on catching Adam’s hair and pulling it tightly, taking a supportive grip of his chin and his lower lip.

“Could I…?” Tor’s voice was silent, but there was hope in his gray eyes, when he shrunk in the corner of the armchair, and begged to stay. He knew, there would be a lot more details when the children were sent up, but he didn’t want to be kept out of them, either. Hoss raised his eyebrows and guided his blue eyes to find Elin’s face, before he scanned the possible tonality of what would follow from the dimples of the older brother, and nodded a little. “All right, perhaps for a while.”

Tor’s eyes were lit up and he sunk even deeper, while the hunger for being adult was shining from his face like a torch. Hoss saw Adam look at him a bit curiously, before he returned his attention to the child in his hands. Carl was getting tired, and his knees didn’t hold anymore. Adam set the boy lying on his arm while he sat more comfortably on the settee and crossed his ankles.

Elin pulled the yarn from the skein and turned her knit work. “Brandy, Adam?” she asked, and presumed Hoss would perform the service if needed. The girls came in and jogged up the stairs, and Hoss looked behind them to hear, if they actually went to their rooms and didn’t stay at the staircase to listen.

“Thanks, Hoss”, Adam said, and looked at him when he poured the drink from the decanter. “Somehow, it was a weird experience. From the first, I was really angry at that man, and I wasn’t sure what I’d do with him.” He lifted the wriggling Carl who had almost dozed off and sat him in a bit better position. “But when I saw his body battered and tossed to the grave in that cave… I mean, when I found Tom lying dead and tossed away, my anger was gone.”

“I understand”, Elin said, and changed the knitting needle. Hoss came with the brandy and Adam held out his free hand for the glass. Hoss could see the way Adam’s eyes had surrendered and let go of the vengeance, when the fate of the man had turned out to be so unfortunate. They both sipped the brandy.

“This… Ann. She sounds like a strong person.” Elin glanced at Adam, to observe the slight movement of the dimple and the vague dim that floated over the hazel eyes before he returned back to their living room.

“Yeah, she was.” Adam coughed silently, and shifted his legs. “Ready to believe in Tom even after everybody else had forgotten anything good that could have been associated with him.”

Elin got up and laid her knit work on the table. Her toes danced a bit when she moved her leg that she had crossed over the other one, before she got up.

“Still, no cousins for this little one”, she said, and lifted Carl from Adam’s arms and pressed a little kiss on the boy’s cheek, before she wished good night and turned around to walk upstairs.

Hoss took a sip of brandy with Adam, and the latter put his emptied glass on the coffee table. Adam crossed his legs, and crossed his fingers around his knee. “How does she know?”

Hoss chuckled, and rested his palms on the arms of the moss green chair, balancing the glass over his levered knee. “I don’t know, brother, but count on me, she does. She seems to have eyes where the rest of us don’t.” He pressed his fingers together to form a tent and looked at Adam with his pale blue eyes. He thought he might ask something, but knowing his brother, he knew enough even when he didn’t.

Adam lowered his eyes, and the thick eyelashes hid his gaze, even if the body remained tense over the crossed fingers hugging the knee, and his lips were oscillating between the chance of opening for a smile, or refraining from it. Hoss tossed the rest of his brandy to his throat, and stood up. “Another glass, brother?”

Adam rested his back against the back of the settee, and tossed his arm over the arm-rest. “Yeah.”

Tor dug up from the chair a bit, breaking the thoughts of the men with the squeak of his seat. Hoss took the decanter and watched the brandy flow. “Those impostors can be a real nuisance. Like the time when me and Joe, we were taken for the Slade boys.” Hoss chuckled at the memory, even though it had been quite a serious business back at the jailhouse and with the nooses. “That was real close for me and Joe that we didn’t dad burn hang.”

Adam raised his eyebrows and hid his mouth behind his fist. “That was quite a coincidence”, he admitted, and took the glass Hoss offered him. “Although, I still wonder what happened to those real Slade boys.”

Hoss shivered. “I don’t right know, Adam. I don’t really wanna think about it, none. But I reckon whatever it was they faced back there in that town of theirs, it was all well deserved.” He sat down in his own armchair and looked at Tor, and chuckled low from his stomach. “But that ain’t the only time we were recognized with Joe from ’em posters.” He leaned back in his chair, and laughed. “We were dad burn offered a bounty for a bank robbery with Little Joe, once.”

Adam cocked his eyebrow, and smiled, teasing. “But you did rob a bank!”
Tor stood up a bit taller in his chair, and his eyes were shining, while Adam and Hoss laughed at the funny memory. His boy’s nature was still yearning for a story of an adventure, while the young man in him was eager to share with his Uncle and Hoss. “Pa, can you tell me again of the trip with the Circus when you wrestled a hundred men and beat them all?”

Adam started to cough in the middle of his glass, and the droplets flew almost as far as where Hoss was sitting. “A hundred?” he asked, and patted his shirt with his fingers where he saw it wet. “And how many elephants did your Pa win from that, a dozen?”

Hoss pursed his lips. “Nah, don’t stick too much on the details, brother. And don’t you dare to mock Old Sheba. Such a fine animal as she is.”

Tor grinned, and dug his elbows into his knees, so that he could rest his chin on his hands. “Was it always you and Joe when something funny happened, Pa?” he asked, and his eyes were curious for experience and a legend.

Hoss thought for a moment, his eyes lighting up, too, and his hand holding the glass starting to point towards Uncle Adam. “Now, son, there is a story of me and Adam, when we bought this race horse… and one, where your Uncle here was arrested twice for a stage coach robbery and we had to go and fetch him because he saw ghosts.” He grinned at the glaring Adam. “King Arthur, if I’m not badly mistaken, wasn’t it, Adam?”

“Do we have to go back to that?” Adam’s defenses were being lowered, though, because he saw the excitement in Tor’s eyes and figure that stubbornly grew his wrists out of his shirt cuffs.

Hoss stood up and walked to the decanter. Three glasses was nothing for two big men, after all. For a moment, he hesitated, wondering if he should pour a small glass for Tor, as well. Maybe? Tor had a few precious blonde hairs above his lip, which he probably groomed very tenderly and stared at in the mirror, when he was certain that there was nobody else around. Maybe a teaspoonful of brandy wouldn’t hurt.

* * *

Elin was humming in the kitchen; she had woken up early and already had her breakfast before the others. She wanted to milk the cows herself, because she didn’t trust the other people’s fingers to be as gentle as hers.

“I’m still feeling so full that I leak”, she said, when she came to the dining table and set the coffee pot on the checkered cloth. “I’m afraid that even half of that milk I caught in the bucket is mine.” When all of the faces around the table turned sour and creased in disgust, she started to laugh at a snorting way at the gesture in which they all pushed their glasses a bit further away. Elin chuckled. “Drink up, Rebecka, it’s not so many years since you stopped liking it”, she continued, and made the youngest daughter blush, embarrassed.

“Mamma, that’s annoying!” she complained, and dropped her knife and her fork on the flapjacks.

“Mamma, she’s right”, said Sigrid, and pushed her chair away.

“Do you have to, Mamma?” Tor said, and looked slightly green.

Elin bit her tongue, and her eyes continued to twinkle and the stifled laughter almost chimed in the air. Hoss looked at his glass for one more time, too, and decided that he wasn’t even that hungry anymore. Even though his cheek kept resting on his palm, his fingers touching his temple, while he stayed to look at the flapjacks and the jam on the ornate china. A sneer crept on his face, and with the same speed his wife crept to the other side of him to take a hold of his hair and place a wet, smacking kiss on the other temple.

“Have a good day of bronco-busting on the Ponderosa”, she said, and crossed her arms to look at Hoss and Tor. “But maybe Tor doesn’t need to ride the broncos.”

“No, no”, both Hoss and Tor said in unison. But both Tor and Hoss added in their minds, too, that maybe Tor wouldn’t ride the worst and the wildest ones. He could stick on an ordinary horse bucking and rearing even without a saddle, still, and in a few years Hoss was almost certain he’d take after busting horses better than Little Joe.

* * *

When Hoss was home, he liked to carry Carl on his arm while he was seeing to the chores. He took the boy to watch the horses in the corral, took him to see if the saddles and bridles needed waxing, or took him to look at the half-tamed crow that came as a guest to their house every now and then, to exchange a word or two with her old friend Tor.

He would put the little hand on the little filly that was born to Granen very close to when Carl himself was born, too, and he’d kneel down so that Svartan would lick Carl’s face so that the boy would scream and laugh.

(Sometimes Hoss even needed to hold the hollering and screaming boy still in the middle of his raging tantrum, when others could only cover their ears and howl back. But those times were few, and Hoss had held even bigger young men still in his arms. Most of the time, as Hoss remembered it, the boy was very even-tempered and controlled.)

When the weather was clear, Hoss carried the boy to see the laundry house and the bath house and the edge of the forest where they could pick up pine cones and touch the tall trees, and he let the boy sit in the crook of his elbow while he would watch Joe work with the young horses that were broken to work at their corral.

“Is he a part of your arm?” Joe often teased, and tucked his hat a bit back on his brown curls while his gloved fists would search to lean on his belt. When he had the chance, however, he used it to toss the boy over his shoulders in a way that made Elin dizzy, and Tor followed his example. Hoss felt his mouth dry watching it, but in the end, he considered the boy to have quite a good time, from what he could tell of the round blue eyes and delighted, a bit surprised grin between the plump cheeks.

Perhaps it was for the good; it was never sure when the little trollkarl would grow too big to ride on anybody’s shoulders.

* * *

Elin and Hoss came from the path that led from Linden’s Creek to the little clearing where Elin’s parents were buried a long time ago. Hoss stopped at the thought, and reminded himself, that it hadn’t been exactly that long ago. It only felt so distant, when the vegetation had taken over so completely, and one of the little crosses was almost covered with tendrils and lichens.

Carl left his mother’s hand and went to see the bumps a bit closer, standing there and looking at the two wooden crosses that had been covered by plants and mold so much that it was even a wonder how they had been battered so by nature in such a short time. But they were still upright. Elin stood still, looking at the graves, and Hoss put his arm around her shoulders to let her know he was there, too. Carl started to crawl over the ferns and the moss, pulling the weeds and the little green flowers away, and Hoss jolted towards him. “Now, young fellow, that ain’t a way to respect your grandparents”, he said, while Carl wanted to struggle away from his hold with a sound of some yet unspoken language accompanying his mood.

Elin knelt down and put her hand over one of the graves, and smiled pensively. “I don’t think they’d mind, they’d be just happy to meet such a strong grandson.” She gave her hands up to Hoss and he let go of Carl, and Elin pulled the boy closer to her. Carl was more interested in kicking himself away from her arms and going to take hold of the lichen covered cross, but Elin held his little fists away. “Perhaps you won’t come here too often, like Rebecka and Sigrid and Tor don’t, but it’s important for din Mamma.” She kissed Carl on the back of his head. “It’s your mormor and morfar.”

Carl broke loose and crawled over the grave, and said something in his shrill tone that didn’t produce comprehendible words just yet. His feet were a bit too unreliable, as well, and his attempts to run to the small vale between the bumps ended in him landing on his bottom on the moss. It was soft, he didn’t hurt himself, but his mouth twisted into a cry and his blue round eyes were filled with tears. He breathed a few times heavily, before the sound came, and Hoss stepped over the grave to pick him up. “Did you forget your feet ain’t reliable in the woods, li’l feller?”

Hoss’ hand wiped the light brown hair aside from Carl’s forehead, and went to his own pocket to find a handkerchief for the running nose. Carl took a firm hold of his collar and started to peer down, forgetting about why he had cried. Hoss released him and looked after him when he tried to walk wobbly towards the trees and the bushes. There shouldn’t be any larger beasts around, they were usually afraid of the smell of humans. Carl made his way determined, and secured his advancement with the help of his knees and his hands, when his legs didn’t obey properly.

Elin rose up. “Come here, kom hit, Calle!” Carl looked behind his back and started to run as fast as his thick little legs could carry him, in the other direction from his mother. He was able to reach the edge of the clearing, before Elin caught his arm and started pulling him from his hand towards Hoss. “We’re going back, Calle. To the Creek.”

Carl was travelling on the ground for a moment on his bottom, when he turned his face to the other direction, and let his legs fall lifeless as two rags, but when Elin still didn’t release his hand. Elin, bent down, put her hands under his armpits and lifted him to stand. “Home.” When Carl had one more opinion about where and how to go, Elin took him on her arm and started to carry him towards Hoss despite the loud protests of the boy. “Let’s go. Tor and Sigrid should have unloaded the buckboard by now.”

Hoss adjusted his hat and stepped back to the path that led to Linden’s Creek.

* * *

Death had paid a visit to Virginia City and required its taxes from Farmer Perkins. Hoss and Joe had nearly witnessed a shooting at the general store, and to haul the gloating Farmer Perkins, they had ended up opposing an organized gang lead by Sam Bryant. Not only that, they had asked for a trial. On top of that, Ben Cartwright had ended up as a hostage.

Life felt so dark and gloomy for Hoss, and for all the brothers, because the tendrils of death were preparing to visit again, to twirl around Ben Cartwright’s neck.

His Pa.

The muscles of his face, right under Hoss’ eyes, moved, when disgust and fear and many other feelings took hold of his sincere expression. But he had no choice. Adam and Joe were waiting at the Sheriff’s office, and he stood in too much of danger sneaking out of these alleys already.

He held Elin’s arms for an escaping moment. “This ain’t no place for a wife or the kids.” Elin could see Hoss’ worry behind his level words, though. “Go to the Creek, nobody’ll look for you, there.” She swallowed in front of the worry that ebbed behind Hoss’ assuring tone.

“Hoss, you know nobody can find the Creek unless they really know what they are looking for. We’ll be safe.” Her hand rested upon his vest, on the pinned tin badge, for a moment, before she let go.

Hoss nodded, as he knew the road to the Creek was sometimes so difficult to see from the ground, that occasional wanderers just trailed away and ended up elsewhere. He lifted Elin up on the saddle, and her stocking-covered leg was exposed when the skirt pulled up. “Ride carefully”, he said, and his throat was thick and crowded when he kissed the fingers of his wife.

“I’ll pray for you, you all”, she whispered, and the touch of her fingers at his cheek and his earlobe said goodbye to him before she spurred the horse to start away. A tear seemed to fall to the ground on the place where the horse had stood a moment ago. Tor held dozing little Carl in front of him in the saddle, and the girls rode off on their ponies. Before Hoss could realize they could be, they had all disappeared in the night as five of its shadows, and the sound of the hooves was gone.

He lowered his head and covered his eyes for a moment, before all that was to come. When he breathed in and out again, he turned on his heels and started to go back to the sheriff’s office.

* * *

It was a chilly and windy day, and Hoss felt quite snappy when Carl kept throwing his covers and his hat down to the ground even though he wanted to be at the yard when Hoss was checking the cracking corners of the house. Joe had taken the girls to Virginia City, where he’d pick up the supplies and the mail, and for an escaping moment, Hoss thought for the hundredth of time that he should have given Carl, too. Elin was baking, and she didn’t let Carl to come anywhere near the hot plates and two stoves, or the hot dark bread that lay cooling at the sideboards. She’d only take a break when she’d nurse Carl and give him a snack, and then she’d put on her apron again and close the world out from her kitchen.

What was the sound on the pathway, was it a horse approaching the house? Hoss picked up his ears, and was assured, that a horse was coming along. He took a hold of Carl’s back and pulled him to come to the front yard with him, ready to smile and to greet whoever it was supposed to be. But he wasn’t able to smile or to greet, when he saw a buckboard coming closer with an angry Mr. Keller and a shrunken Tor who was hanging his head.

Hoss frowned, but remembered to tip his hat. Elin had seen the buckboard from the window, and she came out, too, wiping her floured hands on her apron. “Mr. Keller…” she greeted, looking at Tor with an unborn glare hovering about her eyes.

Hoss watched Mr. Keller taking hold of the collar of Tor’s jacket and both of them climbing down from the buckboard uncomfortably. Mr. Keller, a very stern-looking home-steader from a bit further away and the father-in-law of Mary-Ann Keller, held Tor in front of him and looked very grimly at Hoss and Elin.

“I caught your boy being friendly with our Louise”, he said curtly, and let go of Tor’s coat. “A bit too friendly and a bit too much in the barn, if I may say so.” A grumpy cough sealed the sentence, and the arms of Mr. Keller crossed tightly above his chest, his fingers digging to his arm pits.

Hoss didn’t like this new way of confidence that was being built with the faint shadow of the whiskers Tor was growing. He grabbed him from the chest of his coat and lifted him up. “You were what?” he grumbled, before Elin pulled his arm down and forced him to let go of the boy.

“Calm down, Hoss, he’s only a boy”, she said, and looked a bit insecurely at the deeply furrowed brow of Hoss, before turning to the young man. “Is it true, Tor?”

Tor bowed his head and looked at the different sets of shoes and boots, before he was able to answer feebly. “Yes, Mamma. We was.”

Elin grabbed the chest of his shirt with both hands, ready to shake.

“No, no, no, Mrs. Cartwright, just remember he’s only a boy”, Mr. Keller said with a portion of anxiety in his own voice, when he saw the quick rise of temper in her. He and Hoss forced Elin to let go, and Mr. Keller backed out a bit hastily, raising his hat and bowing his head.

“Now, remember, maybe it was just a little kiss, just a bit on the cheek, quite innocent, for all I can figure”, he said hastily, before he climbed on the buckboard and raised his hat once more. “Just to let you know…” his voice drifted away, and he reined his horse away.

Elin stared at Tor, but Hoss stepped in front of her and nodded to the boy. “Get inside, Tor. Go to your room.” The boy started off, and Elin shot sparks with her eyes to every sneaking step he took, before the door slammed behind his back.

“If he ever thought he heard me holler, he hasn’t seen this day.” Elin hurled on her heels and made sure her cuffs were more securely fastened up her arms, and breathed in so that Hoss saw her shoulders and her back expand very dangerously. He took hold of Elin’s arms and stopped her, and hugged her shoulders and her back so that she couldn’t move anywhere.

“Hold it right there, Elin, you ain’t going nowhere.”

“Just watch me, Hoss. Let me go!”

“No, Elin, I won’t. Not when your eyes are throwing arrows and your hot head is filled with dad burn nitroglycerine.” Hoss felt a kick at his own leg, but he could take it. He was quite sure, though, that it was worth a bruise to let her take her steam out at him, rather than the boy. No matter how much the boy seemed to have developed lately, he was still just a boy.

Elin’s eyes were piercing hot and her body tight as an archer’s bow when she finally forced her fists to open. Hoss breathed in and out, and released his own grip a bit. But only a bit. “Ailynn, it ain’t good to talk in anger.”

“I’ll talk in any emotion I please, when it’s my son I’m talking about!” she snapped, and Hoss pulled his head away from her clacking teeth when she closed her mouth. Elin glared at him with her nostrils flaring. “There might be a well-developed girl out there taking an abuse of my Tor, and I’m gonna make sure that for each kiss he’ll feel a clang of shame, just to remember to keep out.”

“I don’t know who swapped your brains with jelly, but I sure feel good that I ain’t the one to whom that jelly belongs. Listen to yourself, Ailynn!” Hoss felt her shift, but not relax an inch. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“Sense.” Elin’s gritted teeth were making her cheeks clench.

Hoss held her shoulders, even when her twitching in his grip got less strong. The gray of her eyes was still the gray of the steam and a thunderstorm, and she was in no condition to answer for her deeds. ”Elin, you remember how you held me still when I was about to tear the whole Ponderosa down when I realized Joe had been teaching Thor to box?” When Hoss had found out, it had required Ben and four ranch hands to hold him still, until he – gradually – calmed down enough and buried all the ideas of skinning Joe alive and doing the same to the boy. It had taken the whole day and a part of the next day for him too cool down, though, and he was still a bit frustrated about the fact that Rebecka and Sigrid had asked Hop Sing to pack food for them, for smuggling it secretly to their Uncle and big brother, who had camped out a few miles away.

Hoss turned Elin around, and she turned her eyes away, because she didn’t like to face him when he was right. Hoss frowned. “Maybe you’d feel like you’d done something, if you went in and did or said what you think now you should. But it’d only give you the feeling that you’ve done something. Something, all right, but maybe not the right thing.” Hoss creased his nose and sniffed. “Maybe something you’d regret.”

Elin turned her head the other way. Hoss continued. “Ailynn, you know this ain’t really you speaking. Not you. You’ve never been like this, and I ain’t gonna let you start now. Don’t you think Thor would understand it all a bit better, if we’d try to go through his head, first?” Hoss’ eyebrows rose up above his widened blue eyes, when he bowed his head to peer closer at Elin’s face.

Elin sighed, and let her head hang. “What do you suggest, then?”

Hoss straightened up, and looked inside himself, troubled. “Maybe it’d be good if I talked with him. About the other things involved.” The corner of his mouth twitched, and his eyes observed Elin’s face from the hairline to the chin and back. “Commitment.” He looked Elin in her eyes. “Trust.” Elin’s gray eyes had become a bit moist. “Respect.”

Elin inhaled a sob, and Hoss let go. “Maybe that’d be good”, she said, and her hands hung lose by her sides. “I hate you, Hoss.”

She turned a bit sideways, and Hoss patted her on her bottom. “You’re a good wife.” He was rewarded with a mumble of cusses in Swedish, before Elin started to scan the yard for Carl.

Hoss took a deep breath and went inside.

* * *

Raking the leaves was fun. At least, if Hoss asked it from Rebecka and Carl.

Rebecka was highly industrious, and her white plaits were often unraveling into fine clouds of bleached straw, when the ribbons got loose. Her head was soon like a dandelion ready to be blown to the wind, when she tossed her rake to the ground and ran to jump in the pile of autumn leaves, of red, gold, brown and all the spectrum of shades they had.

Carl liked to run to his sister, too, and encouraged by her example, his little hands would try to throw the leaves up in clouds. It didn’t bother him that his hands were not as skillful and the sprinkle was quite incomplete, the leaves too few and the motion too rough. The giggles were, nevertheless, enough to match Rebecka’s, and she helped him to stand under the fall of the leaves. The boy used to stop moving, completely, and his round blue eyes were paused in complete awe, when his face was brushed gently by the colored snowflakes that were not yet snow. Rebecka took his hands and pulled him to a mad dance, singing songs in Swedish and tossing Calle into the air as many times as her yet young arms could handle.

When it was hard to tell that anybody had done any raking at all, they would gather the pile together again, and repeat their autumn ritual. Hoss could lean on his own tools for quite some time, watching, and in the end he would see Elin coming to the children, joining in to throw the leaves in the air and letting them fall on her sun-sprinkled freckles, her hands spread out wide like they could catch up the air and make her rise up from the ground.

* * *

Hoss stepped in when he heard Sigrid singing in her room, still awake. She had been learning her mother’s skills in embroidery, but her mother used to make jokes about how she would end up waiting until her grandmother’s age, if she’d wish to have a proper hope chest. Now, she was wearing the night gown she had decorated with blue and red, perhaps not as ornately as her mother, but with a style that showed she had at least tried earnestly.

She smiled, when Hoss came in, and her hair fell over her shoulder in abundant locks, when she bowed for a moment to fold her bed spread away from the bed. Hoss took an amused look at the corner, where she had a crochet work of a bed spread started, or at least she had a bundle of yarn and a piece that was perhaps of the size of a saddle cloth. Elin hadn’t allowed Sigrid to undo it, for all her unfaltering faith, and obediently Sigrid was able to add a quarter of an inch at some direction, when she tried very hard.

“I just heard you singing”, he said, and didn’t even know why exactly he had come in the first place. Sigrid put the bed spread on a chair, and looked up with her gray glimmering eyes, that had a touch of gold right in the middle.

“I was… I was sort of wanting for you to come, Pa.” Sigrid stepped out from behind her bed, and hesitated. “Maybe… you could brush my hair, Pa? Like you used to.” She smiled, and Hoss smiled, too, remembering how Sigrid had pushed him on a chair and sat in front of him, not letting him go before he had learned to braid her hair as well as her mother had been able to.

“Sure, sweet pie, sit down.” Sigrid went to sit by a dressing table, where she faced her own reflection from the mirror, and Hoss took the comb. She had a hairbrush, a real fine and silvery one Joe had brought her all the way from San Francisco, but it wasn’t quite enough to penetrate her thick, wavy hair.

Sigrid looked at Hoss, who stood behind her and ran the comb through her syrup brown hair, and twisted her mouth, looking at her own cheekbones and the tip of her nose that was a lot more straight than her mother’s. The freckles had sprinkled a touch of gold at her face. Her face had become slightly spotted, Hoss noticed, but the brown waterfall framing her face with the sharp and demanding eyes took the attention certainly away. “Pa, do you think I’ll be beautiful?”

The movement of the comb stopped for a moment, the Pa was caught by surprise. Hoss looked back at Sigrid’s level eyes and continued to go through her hair with the ivory comb, trying to be as soft and as careful as with combing a cobweb, and looked back at Sigrid’s features. She looked like an image of her Ma, and yet she did also resemble the stranger Hoss had never met, the kind man who had just come to Linden’s Creek and drawn pictures that were more real than the real life. He was a stranger to Hoss, perhaps even to the three oldest children, too, but his gift was still present in ways that Hoss felt grateful he had been able to receive. “I don’t think you’ll need to wait to become pretty, Secret”, Hoss said, and looked at the oval face and the observant eyebrows. “You’re pretty as a picture, already.”

“That’s not a good answer, Pa, it depends who’s drawing.” Sigrid’s smile showed more discontent than happiness; however, she was still waiting for Hoss’ answer. Perhaps there was a glint of hope in the corner of her left eye.

Hoss chuckled. “Heh. Uhm. In your case, I’m afraid, it was Carl, all right.” He saw Sigrid showing her tongue through the mirror, where they both had the opposite conversation with each other, and parted Sigrid’s hair from the middle. Maybe he still remembered how to braid.

Sigrid smiled when Hoss’ tongue came out from between his teeth, and she took the silver brush in her hand, to turn it around and play with it while her hair was treated by her Pa. She giggled. “Your fingers still feel like big ants on my scalp”, she said, when Hoss had to start again and ruffle her hair lose. Her shoulders were a bit rounder from the back, arching over the waist that had yet another curve forming underneath, and the few glimpses Hoss had at the mirror showed, she wasn’t only curving from the back.

How many boys might have already tried to lure her to sneak out from the children’s games? Or had they yet noticed her pointy lips that split to a smile quite easily? Hoss saw his reflection frown, and forced the furrow to go away. He’d ask Elin, she’d know. Surely. Or she could find out. Maybe.

“Pa, I wanna… I wanna ask you something.” Sigrid put the brush back on the table, and took it back, as she didn’t know how to start. Hoss stopped, and looked at her almond-shaped eyes that were clear as a pond in the early summer. “I wanna… ” she breathed, twice, and with the third she took over her diaphragm and her throat, and spoke again. “I wanna go to college. I mean, when I’m old enough.”

Hoss’ heart sunk.

His little girl wanted to go away.

“Pa, don’t… Mamma said you’d be sad.”

This was why Elin had been happy as a bird in the spring the whole day.

“Pa… It’s only… college. And it’s a year away, maybe two or three.”

Only a year or two. When Adam went to college, he had known him for all of his life, and yet it felt like he left all too soon. But Sigrid, whom he had known only… how many years?

Sigrid stood up and put her hands around his chest, like she had done so many times, although now she could reach him a lot higher, she had gotten so tall. When her head pressed against Hoss’ throat, he noticed his hands were still hanging still beside his sides, and he curled them around Sigrid and his hand cupped the crown of her head.

“Pa, I’d write hundreds of letters and I’d be a real good girl. Maybe you could even visit me. Or I could be home sometimes.”

His little girl. To be going so very far away.

“I’d miss you too”, she said, and swayed a little to the right and the left, making them both move. “I’ll be missing lilla Carl and Rebecka and Tor andMamma, and I will miss you.”

And what if she’d be married away, to some young lawyer or a business man from New York or… Europe, or whatever, and she’d never be back. Sigrid looked up at him, and tried to interpret his stony face. “Pa, it’s only college. It’s not the end of my life.”

Yeah. It shouldn’t be the end of his life, either. Or that was what he had heard. He tried to smile, even though the face felt unfamiliarly reluctant to do that. “You’re a bright kid, Secret, bright and ambitious. I’d be a fool to not let you go, sweetheart.”

Sigrid pressed a kiss up on his cheek, and sat down. “You’ve been a big fool many times, so I’ll ask again, later”, she said, and smiled all too wistfully for such a young girl. “Can you finish the other side, before I go to bed?”

Hoss took the comb, and thought, how easy it was to become just an old fool. Sigrid pressed his fingers with her own long and lean ones, when he held his hand for a moment on her shoulder. “I’d be fine, Pa.”

But would he?

* * *

After several weeks of barely seeing each other, the Cartwrights had agreed to have a calm Sunday picnic. Joe had brought fishing poles for the girls and for himself, and while Sigrid and Rebecka were standing by the chill water, Joe sat far away and held Carl between his legs, holding his arms to help to support the long pole and pretend to be fishing. “Fee”, Carl said every time when they saw a circle form on the surface of the brook, or if something jumped in the water.

“Fee tumping. Big fee. Calle big fee.”

Ungle Toe followed the direction of the pointed finger with his green eyes, and nodded gravely. He peered at the water like a hunter, and confirmed. “Yeah, Cally. That was a real big fish, all for you.” He had kicked his boots away, and his toes were moving occasionally, with the rhythm of the moving buoy that he had made from the bark of the tree, just to amuse Carl.

Rebecka got tired and came to sit next to Joe. She crossed her legs and started to stare at Joe’s toes. She sat there for a long time, deep in her thought, before she finally spoke. “Joe, why do you have hair growing on your toes?”
Joe wasn’t paying attention, before the oddity of the question sunk to his head.

“What did you say?” He held the pole in his hand, for a while, before he had to pull the hook away from the water.

Rebecka played with the grass in front of her. “Nothing, Uncle Joe. I was just wond’ring. Because it seems so pointless.”

Joe chuckled. “Well, Becky, I don’t right know. Why don’t you ask Adam, he’s the smart one in this family.”

Carl got tired, and asked to see Pa. Hoss clapped his hands and stood up, and asked what the boy wanted to see. Soon they both were ducked above the ground, squatting like frogs, the one resembling the other in their round figures. Just that the other one was big as a boulder, the other one equally bulky but a mighty lot smaller.

He heard Rebecka asking if Joe liked children and if he should be married at some point. Hoss picked up his ears, since this was getting kind of interesting.
Joe chuckled, and cleared his throat. Hoss heard the fishing pole land down on the ground, at the same time when an ant climbed up his son’s pointing finger and made little Carl jump and squeak. “An!” He slipped on the ground and landed on his bottom, and Hoss picked him up, dusting his backside and squeezing his nose. “Yeah, Cally. Ant.” He had to turn his head to see Joe’s awkward complexion.

Rebecka took her own shoes off, and hugged her knees to watch her own toes that she made to move. She was puckering her lips thoughtfully. “Perhaps Tor will get married before you, so you don’t have to.” Joe’s embarrassed blush went all unnoticed from her, and she thought Elin’s brassy giggle, which she tried to cut off with her hand over her mouth, was aimed at something different.

Joe lowered his head and the corner of his smile nudged his cheek. “Yeah… You never know.” Tor, standing a bit further away with his own fishing pole, had turned his back to the pair, but Hoss could as much as guess that he had heard every word, too, and he had blushed, much worse than Joe. A grin split his own face, and made Carl slap his lips with his hands. The boy thought all mockery in the world was aimed at him, and he didn’t like it much.

Elin jumped up and hurled a few running steps away. The sound that normally signaled only bad, made Hoss’ lips twist a bit upward, and when he glanced over his shoulder, he could see the cocked eyebrow of Adam, the raised eyebrows of Ben and the surprised tilt of the head of Little Joe, when they all were frozen in what they were doing. When they saw Hoss looking, they returned to what they were doing, a shade of being caught at where they shouldn’t be on their faces. Hoss smiled, and patted Carl on his bottom. “Go ahead, little buddy, go to Grandpa and help to spread the picnic.”

Carl took off, pointing his fingers at Gampa and Ungle Adam and demanding the equipment, before he squatted down between his heels to start to arrange cups and forks. It wasn’t a very neat process with his fingers living half of the time in his mouth and the other half on the ground, nor very quick for his inexperience, but his expression of concentration made both Ben and Adam grin.

Hoss rose up, and dusted off some sand from his trousers, and paused to smile to himself under the rim of his big hat. Of course he had known. He had seen the way her jaw line had changed its sharp edge and her cheekbones that received a softer polish. She had waved her hand and called him silly, when he had put his fingers on top of the changes. ‘I’m afraid I’m beyond the reach of all that, by now’, she had said, and taken Carl on her thighs to nurse.

It didn’t sound so much that she was, though, not right now. Hoss dug up a clean handkerchief to offer to his wife, and walked to her and stroked her back, stroking also the curls that were not wound in her loose braid away from her face, while she threw up.

* * *

“Tell me, Hoss, do you still dream?”

“What an odd question. Of course I dream. You always complain I snore, too.”

“Du, idiot, that’s not what I meant, and you know it. Do you still dream?”

Silence.

“No, I reckon it’s been a while since it came, the last time.”

Her shoulders under his arm, her satin hair below his lips.

“Erik, do you think there is a reason?”

Thought.

“No, I ain’t sure if it’s for no reason at all, or what.”

Silence.

“Do you think you miss them, Erik?”

What is the answer?

“No, I reckon I don’t. All content.”

Her nose presses against his chest, feels funny.

“I’m happy you are.”

Hold tighter.

“Kära min.” Mon chérie.

Hold tight.

* * *

XX

“Daggummit…”

It had always been a trifle difficult to do the string-tie up, nicely, but lately the bows were becoming so much more difficult, and to cast the knot on a tie was beyond his imagination. Elin had always been so much better in such things.

This time, too, she approached him, settling the feud with the narrow cloth as easily as she would have calmed down a sleeping dog. Hoss was looking closer at her, as despite his tall figure that had made him almost a legend, time was a bad servant and had determinedly pulled his skeleton down. Not fast, that was for sure, but eventually as an ocean that smoothed mountains.

Elin raised her fingers up to tie the knot through loops that Hoss didn’t follow so ardently, tucking it a few times to make sure it would land elegantly on top of the white shirt. She pulled the white collar a bit, fixed the highest button that had fallen loose even though Hoss had earnestly tried to button it up, and her hands travelled over his chest and his shoulders, when she dusted off the brown coat. ‘Black is the color for funerals’, she had said rather bluntly to the tailor, and picked an earthy brown wool to become his suit.

Streaks of gray had appeared in Elin’s hair, dyeing swirling twilights around her temples and her forehead, when her hair was combed back in a respectable chignon. Freckles were faint by now, but the gold in her eyes had become more, and the corners of her eyes that turned upwards were casting cobwebs to reveal the emotion and affection that had passed through her life. She bit her lower lip, like her daughters used to do, too, and Hoss forgot his tie was throttling him and the cufflinks were still a mess.

He took a hold of the nape of her neck and let his fingers rest there, while his own blue eyes were examining her glimmering face that was about to break into a smile, and just looked. She let her hands rest above his shoulders, and like a thief, the other one started to sneak up to touch his chin and stroke by his face. Her eyes were from some distant place, maybe not from this earth at all. “Do you wanna know what I see in your eyes, Hoss?” she asked, and tucked his collar once more, gently.

“Tell me.”

“The whole wide world.”

He had heard the phrase before. A lump started to evolve in his throat, in a way that made it difficult for him to speak. His voice came out very coarse, and very distant; a stranger was talking, although he knew it was him. “After all these years, Elin?”

His wife pressed her lips together, and crossed her fingers behind the scruff of his neck, tickling the less dense frizzy curls of hair that were still surrounding his head around the portions of a more bald kind.

“Just because of them, kära Hoss.” Cherié.

“Hoss, min Erik.” My Eric. “How did you feel in our wedding day?”

His hands had moved, too, they held her upon his palms like a little fairy. “I didn’t want the moment to come, because I was so dang afraid you’d say no.”

Elin’s laughter ran as a clang of crystal bells hung on the empty plain air. “And I couldn’t wait for the time to pass quickly enough, to get to hear your yes”, she said, and squeezed the tip of his nose.

She paused to look at him, her smile as young as in the day they had met. “Hoss, our children are waiting.” She looked at Hoss, who raised his hand to pull the tie a bit looser, before he remembered the tightness came from something else.

How could one wedding that wasn’t even his make him so nervous? He checked the handkerchief in his pocket, and Elin pressed a flower through the button hole.

Hoss offered his arm to Elin, and she twined her own arm around his arm like tendrils of their shared life.

“Let’s go. We have a wedding to attend.”

* * *

The child was bent over to read the elaborate carvings on the stone, its old style and frills of calligraphy winning the trophy over the child’s capability to interpret the signs.

“Bbbeeeen…j..e..a.mmmminnn Cartwright.” The surname, at least, was familiar.

“Yeah, that’s your Great-Grandpa.” Hoss blinked. Although he had felt so terribly sorry for so long, learning to accept the way of things, by now he only recalled at the memory of the common past, the understanding and the gift of the life lived together. Benjamin Cartwright had been a remarkable man, to many, but to Hoss he had been seen even as more. He chuckled at a long-passed memory.

“Faffa Ben.”

The child stood still. “Why does Grandma call you Farfar?”

“Comes from her language.”

“She calls your Pa Farfar too.”

Hoss smiled at the little kid, and put his large hand over the soft curls of the child. “Maybe we’re getting so old with your Grandma that it gets too easy for her to mix.”

The child was thinking, deeply. “Benjamin.”

“Yes. Although, when I was your age, I thought his name was ‘Yes, Sir, Pa’.”

“You’re just funning.” The eyes of the child climbed up to his own faint blue ones, dubiously.

“Of course.” He tousled the hair of the child and heard a disapproving grunt.
The child continued to read. “Mmmmm…aa..rr…”

“Marie, child.” Hoss swallowed, lightly. The country was not always too generous. “She was our third Ma. We were given a lot of sorrow on behalf of our Mamas who all died too soon.”

The child read the numbers, and frowned. “So many years for Faffa Benjamin, after Marie’s years came to stop.” Little shoulders shrunk. “He must have been lonely.”

Hoss hung his head, in silence, and knelt down to look at the stones from the same angle as the child. “I reckon he was, sometimes, even if us boys were there.”

For a moment, the child had looked very dubiously at the word ‘boys’ that came out of Hoss’ mouth, but then the gray-blue eyes were focused at the graves again. “You would be lonely, too, if there were no Grandma, wouldn’t you?”

Hoss thought of the smell of cardamom in her hair, and the twinkle of the eyes that surprised him at the times he least expected. He felt the scent of cinnamon coming from the heart of the house, her kitchen, and memorized the feel of the hot steam after the steam bath on the skin, and the breeze in the middle of the summer, when all of the linens were hung to dry. “Yeah. I’d be terrible, terrible lonely.”

The child took his big hand and waited for him to say what he came for. They stood there together, in an unbroken silence.

When Hoss was ready, the child spoke. “Let’s go home, Grandpa.”

* * *

The soft white linen was hemmed with small white stitches that created snowflakes, prancing deer which dueled with their horns and watched over the shrags of the pathway that was covered with leaves and stars of ice. It all felt so like at home, and Hoss imagined for a moment how the embroidery would feel under his fingers, even if his fingers were too weary to rise up and start following the figures on the sheet. The back of his head was resting over a pillow that had been padded with its friends, and he could see his dear Elin sitting beside the bed.

Elin, his love. She held his hand, and she put her hand over his forehead and around his cheek, where so much more bone had become touchable by now. Every breath he took felt to come more scarcely, but his body didn’t need it so much, anymore. His lungs were filled with even small gasps; his chest was light and airy.

Even though he felt a trifle sorry to see that his body, so well known for its strength, had been taken to bed by a light fever that had not gone away, he was not so sad to let it rest so plain and naked in front of his God. Somehow, it was even a relief, to be so calm under the gray eyes of his wife, knowing, that although surrendering so easily to the little sickness of the lungs, his life had carried him through several battles, shootings, ordeals and tragedies as a winner.

There was dew in the eyes of Elin, but behind the moist that was clear as crystal glass, the familiar rays of sunlight of her gaze were mixed back to the rush of a mountain brook that ran free and oozing down from the mountains, where the snow had melt. Her hair opened up from the gray bun at her neck, starting to fall down her shoulders as the golden brown rivers that made the streaks of her face disappear and the freckles over the convex arch of the nose sparkle. She had become as young as she had been on the day they met, and Hoss could still smell the birch leaves and the scent of the steam bath, mixing to saffron and ginger at the same time as her pointy lips were curved to smile at him, reluctant for farewell.

She squeezed his fingers, and ran her fingers over his face and through to his gray hair, that only bordered the crown of his head. Her voice was composed of the silver bells and it chimed as soft as the song of the fairies that danced around the campfires when people fell asleep. “You’ll wait for me, my love, you promise?”

“Promise.”

And then, he was ready to let go.

* * *

Epilogue

She used to sit in a rocking chair, and hold her lacy shawl around her shoulders that used to have chills in them despite the warm breezes of the summer, or the fire in the fireplace. Sometimes her grandchildren would be complaining about rain and sleet; she had a springtime or late autumn every day.

Sometimes the house was full of strangers, who meant well towards her, but they had no names. Elin – that was her name, or was it? – used to be scared, but then she realized she should feel secure, and in comfort, and the foreign names and their meanings ceased to matter. The woman who she was – she didn’t have a name, yes? She was enjoying the springtime.

Her hands had become so crippled and shaking, that they were hard to extend far away from her body, but then some of the grandchildren would come and help. They picked up the flowers when her knees didn’t bend anymore, and they made them into a bouquet when she wasn’t strong enough to hold more than one in her hands.

The barnbarn, or barnbarnbarn – great-grandchildren – took her from her hand and followed her steps that had become so wobbly and insecure, and when an inch at each step she had to be afraid she’d fall down on the uneven ground, they held her fragile hands in their hands, so little but so full of life.

Yes, grandchildren – barnbarn. It had a good klang in it; it was a good word. But she had forgotten how many generations passed, and when she spoke to barnbarnbarnbarnbarn, the youngest ones just laughed in their shrill giggles and repeated her words as they heard: “Bambambambambam!” But their laughter did not hurt or insult; she felt how it cared for her and thought tenderly about her. The great-grandchildren. Definitely a good sound in it.

When she sat inside, hearing the voices play and fill the house, she could feel the tendrils of the green plants caressing her hair as they grew stronger, spreading over the corners of the room and expanding to the surfaces of the tables and ornaments. She wore a garland of wild flowers on her snowy white hair, with butterflies and bees and the ladybugs coming to fly and flutter around her head.

And kittens. Fluffy, silky kittens, with eyes not yet open, with eyes that were still sky blue and misty like Lake Tahoe, their little meows just barely enough to hear.

Well, she was told often that she could not hear, and the faces of the barnbarn and the friendly strangers of the house looked often enough like they were shouting.

Funny them. She could hear the grasshoppers and the ebbing of the little brook in the shady grove, the whispers of the snakes and spiders under the house, and the invisible pats of the little shrews back behind the barns and the sheds. She wasn’t deaf, you know.

Although, sometimes she woke up, when the baby cried. But the friendly strangers came to her, adjusting her quilt and patting her pillow, saying to her: “Grandma, the baby grew.”

When her mornings were sour and her limbs refused to move, the friendly strangers took a tray to her room and helped her to eat, spooning soups into her mouth when the shaky hands didn’t hold. She was frustrated to be offered soup all the time, broth, porridge, warm milk, but then again, her teeth had long since taken escape.

The wrinkled lips over the sunken smile creased up. She knew she had loved a man, loved very much. He was calling her from the mountains, with a pencil in his hand and a rifle tied to his back, he was a sweet man of another world. Eagles were circling around him at the mountain top.

But he had been away, and when he had returned, he came back from the forest and took her in his arms and his hands and in his heart. Now, he stood under the pines and juggled the huge pine cones in his large hands, waiting. He had time. A reliable man, a good man. A kind man, a gentle man. But not always so tender, no! The thoughts of it made her chuckle in a way that made the grandchildren blush.

When flowers had been blooming, in the middle of the summer, he had washed her body. Just like she would have been a corpse. Some death had been there, but it was over, now.

Elin smiled. Perhaps, when her body would be washed and wrapped in white once more, he would be there, too.

* * *